


Limbo

by rosethomass (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Community: sabriel_mini, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Pre-Slash, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-01 10:45:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/rosethomass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 5 AU where they fail to save the world. Sam, Cas, and Dean end up in a strange place that isn’t Hell, Heaven, or Purgatory. The only one there is Gabriel who tells them they’ve ended up in Limbo, and all the worlds around them are falling apart as a consequence of the Apocalypse. As they struggle to keep a balance in this new world, Sam gets closer to the angel he used to hate but finds him different, changed. As time goes on, Sam realizes that whatever took the light from the once bright angel is starting to affect all of them too and if they don’t find a way out soon, they’ll be lost forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Limbo

**Author's Note:**

> **Art post coming soon!**  
> 
> SO MANY THANKS TO GIVE. Thanks forever to my beta and partner in crime [Moani](doctorcockles.tumblr.com), who should receive a medal for always is putting up with my writer's angst and crying and complaining. Also to my cheerleader [Lulu](luluisyoung.tumblr.com) for giving me the kick in the ass and the encouragement I needed when I got blocked. Both they and [Sara](ifgodwasagirl.tumblr.com) and [Riley](samswetpanties.tumblr.com) also deserve thanks for helping me come up with the concept for this fic when I had no idea what to write. Also thanks to [Olivia](queerbriel.tumblr.com) and everyone on else on Tumblr for giving me extra support when I needed it. :)
> 
> The last-minute editing I did on this was very minimal so there's probably some mistakes, and they're all completely my fault so I'm sorry about that.

It says a lot about their reputation that the first thing they hear after the world explodes is a very reproachful "What did you _do?_ "

To be fair, they did start it.

But it wasn't their fault it ended. They did their best. There was just no avoiding it.

"It wasn't our fault!" Dean protests before they can even see their accuser. It was dark there—wherever _there_ is.

It was some kind of forest, Sam could tell. From the crunch of nature under his hands and the vague shape of trees surrounding them. It was certainly not Stull Cemetery anymore. 

"How did we get here?" he asked the phantom voice.

"You broke _the world,_ that's how!"

Dean made an irritated noise next to him and on his other side, Castiel got to his feet before helping them up too. 

"I don't appreciate being told off by some disembodied voice, so show your face!" 

A tremor wracked through the earth, almost sending the three of them to the ground again, and Sam figured that whatever was accusing them was pissed off and powerful enough to cause an earthquake. Which meant Dean needed to shut up and not argue with it.

"I will tell you off all I want, Winchester!" the voice shouted back. "Because you've not only broken _your_ world, you've severely damaged all the other worlds in between!"

Another quake, stronger now, tore through the ground and this time they toppled into each other and fell to the ground again, teeth clacking and bones vibrating with the force of it.

"What the hell is going on, Cas?" Dean shouted.

"I'm not sure!" Cas called back. "I don't even know where we are."

It took a moment for the quake to fade out enough for them to get back to their feet, disoriented and shaky.

There was more rumbling and Sam thought it was going to be another earthquake, or maybe the aftershocks, but it was quickly followed by another and he looked up at the sky to see it being sliced with flashes of lightning. It was some kind of storm.

"There are no clouds," he said out loud. "How is there lightning and thunder, but no clouds?"

"Because it's not lightning and thunder," answered the voice.

Dean felt around for a rock at his feet and threw it at the trees, in the general direction where the voice was coming from. "Okay, Mr. Know It All, show your face!"

"I'm not hiding from _you,_ asshole!" A figure emerged from the trees ahead of them, just a silhouette in the dark, but it was definitely man-shaped. Lightning flashed again, illuminating his face.

" _Gabriel?_ " Sam exhaled in surprise.

"Yeah, yeah, long time no see and whatnot." He looked up at the sky, an unreadable expression on his face. "It's not safe to be out in the open. Come on." Gabriel motioned for them to follow him before retreating back into the trees.

The three of them hesitated, unsure. But the ground trembled ominously under them and they figured their best bet was with the one who actually knew what the hell was happening.

They made their way through the trees, stumbling a bit in the dark, until they saw Gabriel—or at least his outline. He ducked down on the ground and called, "Down here!" When they reached him, they found themselves tripping into a burrow-like cave created by the upturned roots of a large tree. It was just big enough for the four of them to squeeze in, just in time as another quake began, violent and angry.

"Are you going to explain what's happening and where the hell we are?" Dean growled at Gabriel, almost as angry as the shaking earth.

"Why don't you start by explaining to me how you let the Apocalypse happen?" Gabriel snapped back. "Did you not watch the video? What happened to the rings plan?"

"It didn't pan out," Sam replied miserably. "We couldn't get them all in time."

"Obviously."

A peal of thunder had them all flinching, drawing closer together. The air got colder and the ground grew harder, shaking underneath them.

"And I'm guessing Mikey and Luci got into a fight so spectacular, it was literally explosive." Gabriel's voice was bitter, undertones of misery peeking through.

"We tried our best," Castiel assured him, drawing closer to Dean's side as more lightning cracked. "But there was no stopping them."

Gabriel snorted. "Well, I can't say I ever had much hope for you guys to begin with."

"You still haven't explained where we are...or how you're even here. Weren't you dead?"

"I am dead, Dean-o. Which means you all are too."

The three of them exchanged shocked looks while Gabriel watched the sky lighting up.

"We're dead?" Sam choked out.

"You pitted two Archangels together in a fight of Biblical proportions, prophesized to be the end of the human world as you know it." Gabriel laughed. "Did you think you were going to survive that?"

"Well...no..." Dean's face screwed up in that way it did when he was trying to figure something out and kept failing. "But shouldn't we be in Heaven if we're dead? We've died before...and I don't remember Heaven being like this. And I also don't remember dead angels hanging out."

"You're not in Heaven. And you’re definitely not in Kansas anymore." Gabriel reached out with his foot and nudged Castiel's leg. "Cassy. Care to take a guess where we are?"

Castiel's brows knitted together. "Purgatory?"

"Mmm.....not exactly. Try a little more west of the border."

Castiel's face lit up with understanding just as the sky lit up with lightning again. "We're in Limbo?"

"Bingo." Gabriel leaned back and reclined his head against a thick root, watching the sky with that same confused face. "The Island of Misfit Toys. The place where you go if you can't go up, down, or sideways."

"The hell does that mean?" It was clear that Dean was getting more and more irritated by the second, and considering their history, Sam didn't think it was a good idea to have him arguing with Gabriel. Then again, Dean was already dead. What more harm could Gabriel do?

"It's kind of a long story," Gabriel said.

"We're dead. We've got time."

Gabriel glanced at them out of the corner of his eyes before taking a deep breath and fixing his gaze on the sky again. "There's more than just Earth, Heaven, and Hell,” he began explaining, pausing every now and then when a crack of thunder drowned him out. “When humans die on Earth, depending on their character while they were alive, they either go up or down. But there's more than just humans on Earth, isn't there? There's monsters, as you call them. Vampires, werewolves, the whole lot. Did you ever wonder where they go after you shiv their asses?"

Sam and Dean exchanged slightly guilty looks and shrugged simultaneously.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Of course not. Well, they can't go up or down, so they go sideways. A plane called Purgatory.” His hand was inside his jacket, and he seemed to only be paying them half his attention as he watched the sky and the forest. Sam wondered if there were any monsters in Limbo too.

“If you’re not a monster but you don’t exactly fit in Heaven or Hell, you got nowhere else to go. Limbo is kind of the plane for all the unwanted losers. Like you and me.” He shot them all a grin before focusing back on the woods and watching the sky. “When Michael and Lucifer had their pissing match, the result was so explosive and so catastrophic that it didn’t just affect the Earth, but all the planes linked to it as well. What you’re seeing now—” he pointed up at the sky—“is the boundaries between those planes crumbling, crashing into one another.”

“And that’s bad?” Dean asked.

Gabriel glared at him. “Does any of this look like it could _possibly_ be a prelude to something _good_?”

“You know, I don’t need your attitude!” Dean grumbled. “Excuse me for hoping that I’d catch a break after I _died._ ”

“Okay, _hold up_ ,” Sam cut in, before Dean and Gabriel started bickering. “Can we go back to the ‘unwanted losers’ part?” Gabriel raised an eyebrow at him. “Why didn’t we get into Heaven? Or Hell, even?”

Gabriel let out a bark of laughter. “After all the trouble you two put them through, neither of them want anything to do with you.”

“And you and Cas?” Sam asked. “If you’re here, why isn’t this place crawling with dead angels?”

“Angels aren’t supposed to go anywhere when they die,” Castiel added, frowning at Gabriel. “They just stop existing, in any plane. How are we both here?”

There was another flash of lightning, just as Gabriel opened his mouth to answer. It was weaker than the ones before, as was the rumble of thunder that followed. The earth’s trembling slowed down and stopped completely and Gabriel frowned at their surroundings.

“I’m gonna have to explain that later, Cas.” He finally pulled his hand out from out of his jacket, holding a long, silver angel blade tight in his fist. “It’s showtime.”

“Showtime?” Sam questioned, but Gabriel was already out of the burrow and moving amongst the trees. There was no more lightning, but a crescent moon gave them enough illumination to follow his movements.

“You guys gonna help or are you just going to sit there on your asses feeling sorry for your dead selves?”

Exchanging an irritated look between them, Sam and Dean quickly got to their feet, followed closely by Cas. They followed Gabriel carefully, all four of them treading lightly, eyes and ears completely open, wary of whatever it was they were looking for.

“Gabriel,” Sam whispered. “What are we looking for? What’s out there?”

“Nothing,” Gabriel whispered back. “That’s what’s supposed to be Limbo—nothing but the souls that belong here. But when the dimensions crash into one another and the boundaries between them crumble, in theory, it should cause gaps to form. And, in theory, anything can come in through those gaps.”

“That sounds…awful,” Dean muttered. 

“There’s a light over there,” Cas said, pointing. “Is that normal?”

They all looked and found a flickering glow between the trees, a few yards away. Gabriel frowned at it and headed in its direction, quietly and carefully like a hunter locking in on his prey. The other three followed just as quietly, Castiel holding up his own angel blade and Sam and Dean holding up their knives. At least they had died with weapons on them.

A shrill piercing noise shattered the quiet and they all stopped, wincing. They all exchanged looks and Gabriel whispered, “ _Demons._ ”

Moving again, faster this time, they hid behind trees so as not to be seen. When they finally caught sight of the demons, Sam almost ran in the opposite direction.

These weren’t demons possessing people or even clouds of black smoke. These were demons straight out of hell, no meatsuits. They were monsters. They were all black and grey, gnarled and twisted bodies, emaciated corpses with skin rotting off in places, bones peeking through. Their fingers were long and clawed, their mouths wide and gaping. Black smoke rose from their skin, as if they were burning from the inside, curling around them.

There were two of them, looking around in confusion and turning to each other as if they thought the other could explain where they were. Behind them, a line of shimmering light hung in the air, and Sam figured that was the gap they had stumbled through without knowing what it was. As they watched, the light faded and disappeared completely, and the demons let out another piercing shriek as they realized they were stuck in this strange land.

Taking advantage of the demons’ confusion, Gabriel leapt out of the trees and charged at them, Castiel quickly following his example. Sam and Dean were only a second behind them.

The demons shrieked as Gabriel came at them, crouching low in defensive positions, ready to pounce, but Gabriel got them before they had the chance. He knocked one of them down with his blade and Castiel tackled the second one as it lunged at Gabriel.

Dean thrust his knife in the demon’s neck as it wrestled with Cas while Sam helped Gabriel with the other one. It swiped at Gabriel’s neck with its claws but Sam stabbed it in the shoulder and it rounded on him, screaming and baring its sharp teeth, some kind of black and red gore trapped between them. Sam braced himself for it to attack him and it lunged to tear out his throat, but he quickly dodged it.

It lunged again, snarling, and he wasn’t so quick the second time, but it didn’t matter because the first few inches of the tip of a silver angel blade were protruding from its chest. It let out a mangled cry and fell at Sam’s feet, the blade slipping out from between its ribs, still clasped tightly in Gabriel’s fist.

Behind them, the second demon cried out too and Sam turned in time to see Castiel pulling out his sword from its neck while Dean let it fall to the ground from where he had been holding it in place. When he turned back around, he shared a victorious smile with Gabriel before looking down at the body of the demon, prepared to start digging a hole for it, but found the ground at his feet empty.

“Where’d it go?” Sam asked, head spinning around to see if it had survived and run off into the woods.

“It’s gone,” Gabriel answered, examining his dirty sword. With a blink, the gunk was gone. “When you kill something in Limbo, it reappears in the plane it’s supposed to be. At least, theoretically. I’ve never heard of someone dying in Limbo before. According to theory, those two should reappear in Hell, very confused. Most likely no one’s going to believe them when they tell their story and they won’t be allowed in Hell’s country club anymore. Poor things.”

“But now they know how to get through,” Dean said. “What if they bring more?”

Gabriel shook his head and started walking back into the woods, motioning for them to follow him. “The individual planes on Earth, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory are constantly moving around, and all of them are much, much larger than Limbo, which never moves at all. Those two shmucks stumbled onto the gap completely by accident. They could search for centuries but the chances of them finding it again are three gazillion to one.”

“Gazillion’s not a real number,” Sam frowned, stepping over roots.

“Thank you, Einstein,” Gabriel rolled his eyes. “The point is, we have a higher chance of Cas becoming an internationally known pop star than those two have of finding us again on purpose. Especially considering Cas is dead and all the recording studios on earth are currently rubble.”

It was then that Sam realized that this was  _Gabriel_ and they were blindly following him through dark woods that apparently had demons and other monsters crawling in them. Gabriel was not one of the good guys. They weren’t supposed to trust him.

But before Sam could ask where it was they were going, Gabriel let out a sigh and smiled. “Here we are.”

They stepped out of the trees and found a shimmering pond, the surface of the water sleek like glass and the crescent moon and the millions of stars perfectly mirrored in it, not a ripple to disturb the image.

“It’s the very center of Limbo,” Gabriel answered. “And is perpetually clean.” He crouched down and picked up a handful of dirt, tossing it into the water. They watched as it dissolved and disappeared, not a trace left.

Gabriel shucked off his jacket and shirt, toed off his shoes, pulled off his socks and jeans and stepped into the water, taking his clothes with him.

“A nice swim will relieve some of the tension caused by finding out you’ve died. Trust me,” he called to the three standing on the shore, watching him uncertainly. “Don’t worry, it’s not cold.”

Dean shrugged and stripped, joining Gabriel in the pond, but keeping a safe distance between him and the angel. Castiel followed suit, handling his ever-present trench coat with care as he folded it and placed it on the ground.

Sam was still wary of their new companion, uncomfortable with how easily Castiel and Dean let Gabriel into the team, after everything that had happened. It made sense to trust him, considering he knew more about everything that was happening than any of them did, but Sam still found it was a challenge.

Since he wasn’t at all comfortable with swimming around Gabriel, Sam pulled off his jacket and went to sit by the edge of the pond. His boot slipped on a pebble and he stumbled, the jacket falling from his hands and into the water. He swore, pulled it out and laid it down on the ground to dry. But when he looked at it again—

“It’s already dry,” he called out in surprise, slipping the jacket back on and noting that it wasn’t even damp.

“Nothing here changes,” Gabriel explained. “It always reverts to the state it came in.”

Dean shook his head. “You’re going to have to explain how this whole freakin’ world works, because I am getting more and more lost by the second.”

“It’s not hard to understand.” Gabriel started floating on his back, head tilted back into the water.

Sam sat on the shore, watching Castiel and Dean swim around, ducking under the water and coming back up as Gabriel drifted lazily near them. “You still haven’t explained why you and Cas are here,” Sam called. “If angels are supposed to disappear, why didn’t you two?”

“Cas is pretty easy to explain.” He stopped swimming to lift his head and look at his brother. “You were in the process of falling, weren’t you?” When Castiel nodded, Gabriel shrugged. “See? He had enough human in him to make sure he didn’t disappear completely, but enough angel in him to not be able to go up or down. Me, however…it’s a bit more complicated.”

“How?”

Gabriel pursed his lips and his brows furrowed, thinking. “Well…I’m part pagan, for one. Pagans have different afterlives. But I can’t go to any of those, since I’m still an archangel. Plus, right before I died, Kali did a bloodspell on me, binding me to her. Even after Luci stabbed me, I couldn’t really  _die_ , not when bound to Kali. But I couldn’t really just come back from that without a scratch, could I? So I guess I died, but, like Cas, I had something holding me back enough that I couldn’t disappear.”

“Good thing Kali did that, then,” Sam said coldly. “Because now we get the pleasure of your company for the rest of eternity.” 

Gabriel swam over to the edge of the pond and stopped in front of Sam, who drew his legs in closer to himself as Gabriel lay on the bank, half out of the water like some kind of amphibious fish.

He smirked up at Sam, teeth glinting in the moonlight. “You don’t like me.” 

Uncomfortable, Sam shuffled backwards a bit. “I can’t remember a reason why I should.” 

Gabriel turned over onto his back, leaning on his elbows and hung his head back to look at Sam upside-down, brows furrowed. “Gee, let me think. I guess people sacrificing themselves to save you and your brother is so commonplace by now that it’s no longer significant to you.”

Sam glared. “Y’know, that  _almost_ makes up for killing my brother almost a thousand times—“

 “It was only one hundred and four, don’t exaggerate.”

 “—and torturing me for six months.”

 “I gave him back, didn’t I?”

Sam resisted the urge to kick him in the head and turned away, stretching out. Gabriel grinned triumphantly and waded away again and Sam sighed, thinking about how long the rest of eternity sounded.

***

Just a few days in Limbo and Sam was already going crazy with Gabriel’s constant presence. The angel didn’t even have to be _doing_ anything particularly infuriating, but Sam felt like he couldn’t get rid of him, and that was what got on his nerves the most. It’s not like he could just run off into the woods on his own. They had already seen what kind of horrors potentially lurked in them, and going off by himself was an extremely stupid, albeit appealing, idea.

Gabriel was, much to Sam’s chagrin, the only thing keeping the three of them relatively safe. He was the only one who knew how this world worked. Even though Castiel knew about Limbo and its basic structure, he was just as confused about actually living in it as Sam and Dean were.

They were all completely lost and Gabriel was their only capable tour guide.

That didn’t stop Sam from getting angry at him. It’s not like he was _looking_ to pick a fight with him. It was just that being around the arrogant dick brought out the ugly in Sam, making it difficult to hold back his snarky or asshole comments. Of course, Gabriel was characteristically obligated to bite back, and before he knew it, Sam was shouting and clenching his fists, body tense and ready to start throwing punches.

The only thing that stopped Sam from bashing Gabriel’s head against a tree was Dean, pulling him away and loudly suggesting they split up to go scouting for any monsters.

Gabriel, grinning dangerously as if amused by Sam’s show of aggression, agreed, and Dean had to practically drag his seething brother away.

So Sam and Dean went off to the east, while Gabriel led an uncomfortable-looking Cas to the north.

“Maybe you should lay off Gabriel a bit?” Dean said as they walked, watching the trees for any movement.

Sam rounded on him in shock. “How are you even saying those words right now? He _killed you._ ”

Dean shrugged, still not looking at Sam and focusing on the woods. “He brought me back, even though he really had no reason to. And I’m dead now, for good. I don’t see a point in being pissed about the whole Mystery Spot deal anymore after this.”

Sam’s entire face contorted into an expression of disgust and confusion. “You’d be singing a different song if it had been you watching me die every day. Besides, when did you become Ghandi, preaching to _me_ about forgiveness and trust?”

“When we died and Gabriel became the only person who has any idea what the hell is going on.” Dean frowned at a bit of mist curling on the ground some ways ahead. “And we kind of caused this whole mess in the first place, so I‘d like to have someone who knows what’s happening to help us fix it. Is fog considered weather?”

“It’s an aspect of weather, yeah.” Sam didn’t even react at the sudden change of subject, kind of glad for it.

“And weather means change, right?” Dean pointed at the mist he was eyeing with the knife he was holding. “Didn’t Gabriel say nothing changes here?”

As they got closer they noticed that the mysterious fog was moving. It wasn’t going anywhere, confined to one place, but it was curling and shifting around itself.

Wary, weapons ready, Sam and Dean moved even closer. They were faced with a large wall of mist, not spreading out, just shifting rapidly over and around itself as if it were trapped in a crystal ball.

“Is that normal?” Dean muttered and Sam shrugged helplessly. “Maybe it’s a gap? Maybe something’s gonna come out of it.”

They stepped closer until they were about a foot away from it. Sam refrained from reaching a hand out to touch it, unsure of what it would do. There seemed to be figures, shapes, moving about inside.

“ _Dean_?” came a voice from the mist and they both jumped back in shock. “ _Sam_?”

The brothers exchanged a look before Dean cleared his throat and called out, “Who’s there?”

“ _Oh! It_ is _you!_ ” exclaimed the voice, getting closer, becoming more distinct, definitely feminine. One of the figures in the mist stopped moving along with the rest. As it got closer, it started changing from a shapeless blob into something vaguely humanoid. Limbs took form and muted colors painted it. There seemed to be a gold halo around its head.

It became more and more distinct, until…

“Is that—?”

“ _Jo?_ ” Dean finished.

What looked like a golden halo was actually blonde locks and what had been a shapeless blob of fog was actually their old friend. She looked just like she had the last time they had seen her, minus the guts spilling out of her stomach and the blood covering every inch of her. She was clean and pristine, smiling widely at them.

“ _Hi!_ ” she squealed happily. Her smile faltered as she studied them. “ _Are you guys ghosts or something?”_

“Uhh…” Sam said eloquently, arms flailing a bit in his confusion. “No?”

Jo cocked her head. “ _That’s what I thought. I haven’t seen a ghost in Heaven in all the time I’ve been here. So what are you guys? You’re all...foggy._ ”

“We’re dead,” Dean answered. “We’re…spirits.”

Jo frowned. “ _Huh…really? You don’t look like any of the other dead people in Heaven.”_

“Because we’re not _in_ Heaven,” Sam tried explaining. “It’s…kind of a long story.”

Jo shrugged, leaning against something they couldn’t really see. Maybe in her Heaven, there was a table or a chair there, but all they could see was her, faded as if looking through a dirty window, but there. “I’ve got time.”

So they explained. They explained everything that had happened since their failed attack on Lucifer in Carthage, the last thing Jo remembers. They talked about how they weren’t quick enough to save the world, how Michael and Lucifer went head-to-head and ended up taking the entire world with them. How they couldn’t go to Heaven or to Hell, how they’d ended up somewhere in between.

When they finished explaining, Jo pursed her lips. “ _So…what you’re telling me is…I died for nothing?_ ”

As if they didn’t have enough guilt on their shoulders.

Jo shrugged. “ _Oh, well. From what I hear, I was going to die anyways, along with everyone else. I just got a headstart on all of them.”_ She grinned at them and Sam felt some of the tension ease.

 _“So, Sam_ ,” she said, mouth slanted mischievously, “ _what’s it like hanging out with the guy whose sole joy in life is torturing you? I mean, this Gabriel guy, that’s the Trickster you guys told me about right?”_

“Yeah, that’s him,” Dean chuckled. “Sam’s struggling.”

“ _And you’re not?_ ” Jo asked. “ _I mean, he did kill you a few million times._ ”

“I’m over it. He’s our only shot here, since he knows more than any of us. If only Sam wasn’t trying to rip his head off every five minutes.”

Sam glared at him.

“ _Sam will get over it too. At some point._ ” Jo smiled sweetly. “ _He’s too nice to hate anyone for too long._ ”

Sam smiled back at her, a bit bashfully, even if he didn’t really believe her.

They chatted for a while, Jo telling them all about Heaven and the people she’d met. She said Ash had found her and taught her how to travel between different people’s Heavens. She’d found Ellen and some other friends, promised to let them know that Sam and Dean were doing just fine, as dubious as that reassurance was.

After a good long while of talking, Jo sent them off to finish their scouting, after making them promise to find her again and talk to her every now and then.

The brothers walked away after Jo had disappeared, taking the fog with her, a bit cheerier now that they were assured that even though everyone they knew was dead, at least they were happy.

 ***

The biggest question about Limbo that Sam has would have to be, “Why do we have to sleep if we’re dead?” They’re all tired, muscles sore, bodies aching for a horizontal position on a soft surface to rest on. It’s not logical that their souls need sleep.

When Sam asks, Gabriel just shrugs and says, “That’s something I haven’t figured out yet.” His back is turned to Sam as he adjusts the soft moss and leaves he calls a bed and there’s something in his tone that Sam isn’t sure he trusts. He had decided to give Gabriel a little more leniency after his talk with Dean, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling unsure about some of the things Gabriel says.

So far, all the questions that they’ve asked him, Gabriel has answered easily and happily, and Sam figures it’s because after a few months with no one to talk to, any kind of company or conversation is welcome to him. Realizing that causes a pang of pity in Sam’s chest, but it also makes him more aware of the things Gabriel says and how he says them.

When Dean had asked how big Limbo was, Gabriel readily answered that his measurements had told him it was about ten miles in radius and yes, Dean, it’s a perfectly circular island.

When Castiel had mentioned how tall the trees seemed, Gabriel commented that they weren’t tall—they were infinite. He’d told them the story of when he’d gotten bored and climbed one a few weeks after arriving. He’d gotten maybe six stories up when he realized that the tree was never going to end, that none of the trees did.

When Sam asked what time it was, Gabriel smirked and told him to guess. Judging from the position of the moon—right above them, the very center of the sky—Sam had said midnight. Gabriel smiled and said, “Close. You’re off by a few milliseconds. It’s actually that point in time right after 11:59 pm and before 12:00 am—those microscopic moments of time where it’s neither yesterday nor tomorrow nor today. It’s—”

“The limbo of time,” Sam had finished and Gabriel nodded.

“If you like, you can keep track of the days by watching the phases of the moon. It doesn’t move, but it’s a reflection of the moon on Earth, so it does change.” Gabriel’s face darkened for a moment and he looked away from the three of them, busying his hands with something. “I wouldn’t recommend it though. Knowing how long you’ve been trapped only makes you more aware of how long you’re  _going_ to be trapped and the less you think about that, the longer you stay sane.”

Gabriel’s throat bobbed and Sam realized that maybe silence wasn’t the worst thing about Limbo.

After that, Gabriel had quickly changed the subject to sleeping, which he complained loudly that he hadn’t gotten enough of when three idiots destroyed the world, crashed near his shelter, and woken him up. He suggested sleeping in shifts, considering they had to be vigilant of any monsters or creatures slipping through the cracks now, something he made a point of reminding them had not been a problem for him before they showed up.

Despite all his bitching and moaning, he offered to take the first shift and Dean was more than grateful, settling into his little make-shift bed, while Castiel looked unsure and awkward before shifting uncomfortably on his own arrangement of leaves and moss, not too far from Dean’s. Sam looks over at the two of them and thinks that maybe he should join them, settle in at the root of a tree and let himself rest.

But then he remembers that Gabriel is the one entrusted with watching over them while they sleep and Sam isn’t totally convinced that he won’t leave as soon as they all fall asleep, go searching for the monsters he’s supposed to be keeping an eye out for and lead it back to them, just for kicks.

Gabriel shoots him an easy half-grin that tells him he knows exactly what Sam is thinking and he’s not going to confirm or deny that idea. In order to force himself to relax, Sam tells himself that they are the only company Gabriel has had in months and even Gabriel needs someone around, if only to laugh at them and possibly pull practical jokes on them. But not kill them. Killing them would just leave him completely alone again, and that’s not something anyone would willingly bring onto themselves.

So Sam gets comfortable at the root of the tree and pulls his jacket around him. It’s not cold, but it gives him a little sense of comfort to have it tight around his back and shoulders, like a blanket, as if he were still alive, still on Earth, sleeping in a bed and not a forest floor.

He doesn’t fall asleep as easily as the other two, body restless and mind hyperactive. He tries to force his body to relax, squeezes his eyes shut and tries to block his mind from all thoughts—but there’s a lot of them, the past few hours giving him plenty of new and interesting material to sift through, to organize and analyze. Sam tries to hide his dilemma, at least pretend that he’s completely asleep, but it seems that his thinking is way too loud.

“Can’t sleep, Sammy?” Gabriel says, having enough consideration for his own brother and Dean to at least lower his voice.

“It’s Sam,” he grumbles back and sits up to face Gabriel.

The angel shrugged. “Sorry.” His voice is disinterested, unattached, as if he doesn’t really care about Sam or his sleeping problems at all, and that’s probably the case. He doesn’t say anything else, just leans his head back against the tree he’s sitting up against and watches the sky. The sky is beautiful at least. There are no lights in the forest to drown out the stars, and Sam can see them all through the tree branches, filling up the sky completely, blinking and twinkling lazily, as if they hadn’t witnessed the most catastrophic event in history just a few hours ago.

“How do I know this isn’t one of your fancy little Trickster constructs?”

“Hmm?” Gabriel still didn’t look at him.

“How do I know this isn’t just some new trick of yours? Maybe you didn’t really die back at the Elysian Fields, just faked your death and now you’ve put us in this illusion. You’ve done it before.”

Looking utterly annoyed, Gabriel replied, “Because no matter how terrible you think I am, I wouldn’t destroy the entire friggin’  _Earth_ just to pull a prank on you. Don’t flatter yourself, Winchester. You’re not thatimportant to me. Or are you going to argue that the Apocalypse you not only witnessed but _caused,_ with the mistakes and decisions  _you_ made, was also just one big illusion I created?”

Sam’s jaw locked, teeth grit and chest tight. He had done the best he could to stop it, they all had. It wasn’t fair that Gabriel was throwing all that in his face. He had been manipulated, tricked, and lied to and so had Dean. It wasn’t fair that the world burning up was put solely on their shoulders.

“Sorry, buddy,” Gabriel muttered dryly. “You’re not blaming this one on me. I tried to help, you failed anyways.” He shrugged, eyes still fixed on the moon. “Now we’ve all just gotta play with the cards we’ve been dealt. Even if they suck ass.”

Groaning, Sam pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his forehead on them. “I can’t believe I’m stuck on this tiny, empty island with you for the rest of eternity,” he mumbled. He had figured that at least after all the hell he’d been put through when he was alive, he’d get at least some peace once he’d died. He never expected the torture that was Gabriel’s company, with no means of escape.

“I’m pretty cool if you give me a chance,” Gabriel said with a quirk to his lips that made it sound like a joke.

Sam looked up at him, eyes narrowed and lips curled. “Do you honestly expect anything but hatred from me after everything you’ve done to us?”

Gabriel shifted a little, stretching his neck to ease the soreness and relaxed again, face impassive. He finally looked at Sam, eyes flat and colorless. “I don’t care if you hate me for the rest of eternity, Sam. I really don’t. It’s not going to make any of us less dead, or the world any less destroyed. It’s just going to make you angry and uncomfortable for a  _really_ long time because you can’t get rid of me. Your hatred doesn’t do anything for me, good or bad. But if you want to hold onto it, that’s your choice.” He looked back at the sky again.

“And your dislike of me? That’s not gonna affect you, since you’re stuck with me?” Sam asked sharply.

Gabriel turned back to Sam again, finally expressing some kind of emotion. He was frowning, confused. “You think I don’t like you?”

“That’s the general impression that I’ve gotten, yeah.”

“I don’t dislike you.” Gabriel sounded genuinely befuddled, as if he couldn’t see why Sam would even think something like that in the first place. “I don’t have a reason to dislike you. Completely the opposite, actually.”

Sam wasn’t sure what that meant, but he didn’t know how to ask.

“You take this shift,” Gabriel said, taking the opportunity away, which Sam was kind of grateful for. “I’m exhausted and you can’t sleep anyways.” He gripped his sword by the blade and offered the hilt to Sam, who took it cautiously, eyes on Gabriel’s face. “It’ll work better than that little shank you’ve got.”

Without another word, Gabriel curled up on his bed, back turned to Sam, and fell asleep, leaving Sam with even more to think about.

***

The next night, Sam manages to sleep. Another demon had slipped through and run around for a bit, trying to chase them while they chased it. It was four against one and it had ended with Dean’s knife in its skull. They’d had a swim in the pond to celebrate and then gone off scouting separately for any other nasties. Sam had heard the leaves rustling and gotten wary, but when he’d searched in the direction of the sound, had seen Castiel through the trees a little ways away and relaxed again. Nothing eventful happened after that.

The setting was still surreal and Sam was still not completely comfortable with having Gabriel in the group, but after a few days, Sam had gotten accustomed to his new surroundings. Not entirely, but enough to be comfortable going to sleep, as long as someone was keeping watch.

Dean had taken the first shift and when he’d felt like he couldn’t keep his eyes open, he shook Castiel awake gently and settled into his spot to sleep. Castiel stretched and cricked his neck, then sat against a tree, angel blade in his lap, fingers curled around the handle loosely. Castiel had gone the whole day (or, the time they had spent awake, since there were technically no ‘days’) with the hairs on his neck prickling, feeling like he was being watched. So far, no monsters had appeared while they slept, but that didn’t really ease Castiel’s nerves.

A half an hour into his shift, the woods breathed.

It was a soft breath, low and guttural, and it seemed to come from far away. Standing up as quietly as possible, Cas stepped over roots and branches, walking towards the direction where the sound was coming from. He wanted to make sure it was definitely a threat before waking the others.

As Castiel walked deeper into the woods, the trees got denser and thicker, growing closer together and blocking out the moonlight, covering everything in long, large shadows. Branches brushed against his legs and arms, making him twitch nervously and flex his fingers on the handle of the angel blade.

A growl, low and hungry from behind him made Castiel stop, spine tingling. There was definitely something in the woods and it was definitely a threat, but it was also very close to him, even if he could not see it. He couldn’t just start running back to the others, it would probably catch him.

Leaves rustled to his left and Castiel whipped his head around, catching sight of a shadow moving away quickly. It was fast and it was large, but at least it wasn’t right behind him anymore. Castiel stepped backwards slowly, keeping an eye out for any other movements.

There was a shake of a branch above his head and Castiel looked up, caught the large figure hiding amongst the branches, a deep rumble was coming from its chest and it suddenly turned to look down at Castiel, red glowing eyes sending fear right to his gut.

It vanished again, heading further up into the tree and then moving to the next one. Castiel watched it for a moment, trying to figure out where it was trying to go. And then he realized.

Sprinting as fast as he could, weaving through the trees quick and agile, Cas hurried back to where the four of them had set up their shelter, hoping he would reach it before the creature did.

When Castiel got to the camp, he indulged in a single relieved breath to find his three companions still alive and completely undisturbed, sleeping soundly. Then he bent down to shake Dean’s shoulder. Dean woke with a start, hand darting under his head where there should have been a pillow and a gun underneath it, before he remembered that he didn’t have a pillow or a gun anymore.

“ _Dean_ ,” Castiel hissed, eyes darting from tree to tree. “There’s something in the woods. I think it’s looking for us.”

Dean quickly shot up, fully awake now, and shook Sam awake before kicking at Gabriel’s legs. “Get up, Cas says he saw something.”

“Did you see what it was?” Gabriel asked Cas, getting up and surveying the woods around them.

“Not really. But it was large and fast and had red eyes.”

“Well that narrows it down,” Gabriel grumbled.

“Should we split up?” Dean asked in a hushed whisper.

“That’s a terrible idea,” Gabriel said dryly. “We’re more vulnerable apart. I think we should just wait for it to come to us.”

“Are you _serious_?” Sam spat. “We’re just gonna sit here and wait for it to decide to pick us off?”

Gabriel glared. “Do you really think it’s smart to just go off—?”

“ _Sam?_ ” called a voice from the woods and Sam whipped his head around. “ _Is that you?_ ” That was Jo’s voice, and since Sam was nowhere near where they had seen her before, Sam knew that whatever she was looking at wasn’t him.

“I know where it is,” Sam said. He knew how to get to the place with the fog that looked into Heaven, and if Jo was seeing something that wasn’t him, it was probably the monster Cas had seen. “We can get to it before it gets to us.”

The other three looked uncertain, so Sam turned to Dean, silently asking him to follow. After a moment of staring stubbornly at each other, Dean sighed and followed Sam through the woods. Two pairs of footsteps followed them begrudgingly.

“ _Sam?_ ” Jo called again and Sam followed her voice. It didn’t take long for them to reach the spot where he and Dean had seen Jo, but there was no cloud of mist, no fog. Sam was sure this was the place, but there was no trace of the window into Heaven anywhere.

“What the—?”

There was a low growl from the trees.

“It’s a Wendigo,” Gabriel said, suddenly appearing at Sam’s side. “It led you here.” He grabbed Sam’s arm and tugged, pulling him through the woods back in the direction they came from, Dean and Castiel right behind them.

They didn’t get far though. A rustling among the branches above them made them stop cold, muscles tense and hearts in their throat. Gabriel’s fingers were still wrapped around Sam’s forearm, taut but just hovering over it, as if Gabriel had completely forgotten it was there. Sam felt them twitch when the leaves rustled again.

“Gabriel,” Castiel whispered slowly, eyes on the branches above them, searching for something that was built to be unseen. “What happens if it catches us?”

Gabriel didn’t answer, but he gripped Sam’s arm tighter without noticing, his entire body going stiff. A cold dread flooded Sam’s gut and he breathed deeply, trying to keep his heart rate from beating too erratically.

“We should move,” Dean said in a low voice, swallowing thickly and watching the branches too. “Come on.”

He lifted one foot from the ground, ready to take a step backwards, but before the rubber of his sole could so much as brush the leaves, Gabriel lunged forward, finally releasing Sam’s arm and reaching for Dean with a cry of ‘ _Dean, no!_ ’. At the same time, a black figure leapt from the trees, fast as lighting, shrouded Dean in darkness and hauled him up into the trees, making Gabriel stumble as he reached for something that was no longer there.

“ _Dean!”_ Sam cried out, rushing forward and searching the trees for his brother or the beast, but there was nothing to see. His breath was coming fast now, and the cold fear of living in this world for all eternity without Dean filled him to the brim and it took all he had not to break down where he was standing. “Dean, _answer me!_ Dean!”

Castiel flustered anxiously, turning in place, fingers clawed as if prepared to start scaling the trees in search of Dean. Gabriel’s jaw was set and his nostrils were flared, knuckles white on his blade. He didn’t look particularly distraught or worried about Dean’s safety, just angry at something. If Sam weren’t so busy freaking out about Dean, he would have paid attention to that and added it to the list of reasons why Gabriel was not a good companion to have. Unfortunately, he probably wouldn’t be able to tell Dean about that addition.

“ _Dean!”_ Sam shouted again. Leaves rustled with the force of it and his voice broke.

A strangled scream came from the trees, and it was followed by a wet ripping sound and more screaming from Dean, this time with a hint of gargling and choking that had bile coming up in Sam’s throat. He couldn’t help his eyes welling up, standing on a dead forest floor while his brother was up in the trees, hidden by darkness and completely untraceable, being mauled to death.

Castiel’s blade had slipped from his fingers and dropped to the floor with a dull thud, fists clenched and face twisted into a grimace of pain, blue eyes fixed on a spot on the ground as his shoulders shook. Gabriel leapt forward and picked up the blade, pushing it into Castiel’s hand, forcing him to take it.

“It’s going to come after us next,” he whispered, voice a mix of strict but comforting. It didn’t help Castiel at all though, who turned to glare at him and opened his mouth as if to spit out that he didn’t really care if it did, not anymore, but Gabriel stared him down meaningfully. Castiel swallowed down the words but didn’t look any less angry. “Stay alert,” he said to both of them. “Don’t worry about Dean.”

Sam almost punched him. “ _Don’t worry?_ He’s being _shredded to death!_ ”

“What’s one more death to a Winchester?” Gabriel muttered, almost to himself and the only thing stopping Sam from burying the knife he was holding in Gabriel’s throat was a rustling from the trees behind him.

He spun around just in time to see a large figure falling from the trees and landing heavily on the ground with a weak groan. It was Dean, bloody and broken, still alive, but just barely.

Sam rushed to his side, dropped to his knees next to his brother and held up his head, cradling it carefully, déjà vu crashing through him, nasty and acidic down his spine. Tears slipped down his cheeks as Dean’s cloudy eyes found his face. “Dean…” Sam muttered.

Suddenly, Gabriel was on Dean’s other side and Sam didn’t want him there, didn’t want him anywhere near this. But Gabriel didn’t care if he was unwelcome, just began carefully moving aside the shreds of Dean’s jacket to inspect his wounds. The blood covering everything squelched and dripped, covering Gabriel’s hands.

“Missed his aortic and his jugular,” Gabriel muttered. “Cuts are deep but not enough to cause internal damage. It wanted to kill him, but not right away. It’s gonna take him hours to bleed out and die.” He swallowed, eyes dark.

“Can you do something?” Sam choked. Asking Gabriel for help felt like swallowing hot coals, but it didn’t matter if it meant Dean would still be with him.

Gabriel’s eyes found Sam’s furtively, almost guiltily, and then flashed to Cas’, who was standing by Dean’s legs, looking down at the scene with blank eyes.

“You’re gonna have to trust me,” Gabriel said to Dean’s torso, not looking at any of them.

“If it’ll save Dean—“

“Not you, Sam,” he said. He shuffled forward and gripped Dean’s shoulder, making Dean look at him. “I’m gonna fix this, but you have to trust me, okay?”

Dean’s eyes narrowed a bit, trying to show his uncertainty through the weakness.

“Dean, come on,” Gabriel urged. “That thing’s gonna come back and we need your help to fight it off. Gotta help me protect these two idiots, all right? All you gotta do is not struggle for five seconds.”

Dean’s eyes flashed to both Sam and Cas for a moment, lingering a bit on each, before turning back to Gabriel. He pressed his lips together and nodded as determinedly as he could, and Gabriel nodded a bit in reply.

“Good, good.” The angel swallowed and looked at Sam. “Could you step away?”

After a moment of hesitation, Sam rose to his feet and stood next to Castiel, watching Gabriel’s every movement. He lifted his left hand and grabbed Dean’s limp one, muttering, “You’re probably gonna need something to squeeze. This might hurt.”

Right hand reaching out for something Sam couldn’t see, Gabriel began saying, voice soft and comforting, “Look at Sam. Keep your eyes on him. Just focus on him…”

Keeping eye contact with Dean, smiling as comfortingly as he could through his anxiousness, Sam didn’t notice when Gabriel raised his silver angel blade, glinting slightly in the moonlight, and plunged it straight into Dean’s chest. Sam didn’t even notice what had happened until Dean cried out, gasping and choking on a breath that wasn’t coming, organs failing him as Gabriel twisted the blade.

“ _What are you doing?!_ ” Sam screamed, rushing forward and hauling Gabriel away just as he was pulling the blade from his brother’s chest. “ _Why did you do that?!_ ”

He threw Gabriel against a tree violently, rage coursing through him like a consuming fire, rushing up and down his entire body. He didn’t recall choosing to punch Gabriel in the face, but felt the satisfying crunch of a bone under his knuckles, blood splattering on his skin. He fisted Gabriel’s shirt and bashed him against the rough bark, lips curling in sick pleasure at the sight of his broken face.

“I knew we should never have trusted you!” he yelled, raising his arm to punch him again, but Gabriel’s arm flew up to block him.

“And, as usual, you were wrong,” Gabriel said, voice wet and choked from the blood in his mouth, nasally from the broken nose. “Look.”

Chest heaving, not releasing his grip on Gabriel’s shirt, Sam turned and looked. Castiel was kneeling next to Dean, cradling his head and touching his chest gently. His perfect, intact, and unharmed chest. There was no blood. Even Dean’s clothes were stitched together again. Dean’s chest rose and fell lightly.

When Sam turned back to Gabriel, the angel’s blood was also gone, his nose perfectly straight and unbruised. The flecks of blood on Sam’s fist were gone, and so was the ache from having punched Gabriel.

“What the hell?” he whispered, letting go of Gabriel’s clothes, staring at him in shock. “Why didn’t you tell us we couldn’t die here?”

“I did,” Gabriel said petulantly, adjusting his jacket huffily. “You just weren’t paying attention.”

_Nothing here changes. It reverts to the state it came in._

_When you kill something in Limbo, it reappears in the plane it’s supposed to be._

“So that was a mercy killing?” came Dean’s voice, a little weak, but quickly recuperating. He was straightening up slowly, body still a bit sore but otherwise fine. “Killing me quickly so I could come back?”

“I told you we needed your help fighting off the Wendigo. Which is watching us and probably pissed off that it failed to kill you.”

“It should have been obvious,” Castiel muttered, but his brows were furrowed, frowning down at the ground as if upset with himself. “It makes sense. Why didn’t we realize that before?”

“Because of your deeply ingrained sense of mortality,” Gabriel said flatly, going to pick up his blade, also free of any blood. “Even you, Cas. You’ve died enough to have it too.”

When you spend your whole life running on simplysurvivor's instinct—whether it’s saving yourself from a creature or from yourself—you learn to repress any thoughts of premature escape. Your entire life becomes dependent on the philosophy that nothing lasts forever and no matter how trapped you feel in your life, there is going to be an end to it someday and you just have to wait for it.

When that day comes and suddenly you find yourself in a different trap, the philosophy and instinct remains. Even though you logically know that this trap is going to last forever, your subconscious still runs on the belief that nothing lasts that long.

Having this dropped on them, Dean dying and waking up a second later with not a scratch on him is like a punch to the stomach, stealing their breath and leaving them winded, reeling with the fact that there _is no escape._ They already knew that, but their instinct was so deeply seated that it allowed them to not feel the full impact of that knowledge. Now there was nothing between them and that realization, nothing to dull the claustrophobic feeling of having nowhere to go. It was sharp and clear and in full Technicolor right in front of their eyes, just how trapped they were and that there would be no end to it. Not ever.

If Sam had had anything in his stomach, he would have been vomiting it out now.

He braced himself against a tree, feeling scared and like his skin was too tight, and when he looked up at the other three, he saw Cas and Dean struggling themselves, bodies stiff, eyes dark, and staring at nothing. Gabriel was watching him, a sadness in his eyes.

“Come on,” Gabriel said to the three of them. He leaned down and picked up the knife Sam had dropped and placed it in Sam’s limp hand, fingers lingering for a moment in a comforting touch that actually made Sam’s breathing come easier. “It might not be able to kill us, but it can still try. And we can’t let it hang around here.”

The three of them regained control of themselves. “We need to get it out in the open,” Dean said, clearing his throat when his voice came out too thin. “Are there any clearings around here? Or anywhere that’s not trees every five inches?”

Gabriel shook his head. “The only place open enough is the bank of the pond.”

Dean nodded. “That’ll do. But how are we going to kill a Wendigo without fire?”

Gabriel shrugged. “The same way we killed the demons. Creatures in their spiritual form are easier to kill if you get close enough, but stronger and faster than they were on Earth.”

There was a growling noise somewhere to their left and they exchanged a momentary glance with each other before running off in the direction of the pond.

They broke through the trees into the pond’s bank, gravel and pebbles crunching under their boots as they spun around to face the woods, weapons aloft. Not a single leaf stirred and the only sound heard was their breathing.

“Where is it?” Dean growled. There was silence and then Dean, impatient even in death, shouted, “ _Get out here, you son of a bitch!”_

Branches rustled, followed by a deep, guttural growl.

They all tensed, bodies taut and ready for a fight. There was another rustle of leaves, a nasty snarl, and a giant shape of darkness leapt out of the trees, shrieking terribly, and barreled into Sam. It hit him straight in the chest, knocking all the air out of him, and they rolled backwards into the water. Sam felt claws dig into his ribs and let out a scream, water getting in his mouth and down his throat. He lashed out blindly with his knife. He barely grazed the creature, but it didn’t matter because it was quickly hauled away from him by Dean.

Sam rolled out of the pond, choking and coughing up water. The Wendigo was shrieking, lashing out with his unnaturally long limbs as the other three tried to get close enough to stab it. With the Wendigo giving him his back, Sam saw his opportunity and leapt forward, burying his knife into the hilt in the thing’s ribcage. It didn’t kill it, but it got its attention and it whirled to snarl at Sam.

Teeth bared and eyes flashing, it was two seconds away from tearing off Sam’s head, until Castiel buried his blade into its own from the back, tip protruding from between its eyes.

The creature froze, twitched, and its glowing red eyes faded as it crumbled at Sam’s feet. Sam blinked and it was gone, his knife and Cas’ blade lying on the pebbled bank.

“That was exciting,” Dean muttered, pocketing his own knife. He splayed his arms out and dropped them back, shrugging as if to show he had no idea what to do now. Sam looked to Gabriel, who was stretching his arms over his head and squared his jaw.

He wanted answers.

“Well, there’s no point in trying to go back to sleep now,” Sam said. “Why don’t we do a quick scout before going starting our to-do list full of nothing?”

Dean snorted, rolling his head to stretch out his neck. “Sounds like a plan. Why don’t you and I take the south this time and Gabriel and Cas can—?”

“Actually, Dean,” Sam interrupted, “why don’t you go with Cas this time?”

Everyone stopped and turned to look at Sam with furrowed brows, as if he had gone insane.

“Uh….Sammy?” Dean said slowly. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s not,” answered Gabriel quickly. “And I’m not agreeing to it.”

“I never asked you if you wanted to or not,” Sam snapped. “And I’m not going to. We’re taking the south.”

“Listen, Winchester, you can’t just—“

“I’m not _asking,_ Gabriel,” Sam snarled, angry now. “I just need to ask you some questions and I find that you’re a lot more honest when there’s less people around. So let’s go.”

Gabriel fidgeted for a moment before turning to Cas. “You’ll go looking for me if I don’t come back, right? I am your brother, after all.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous, just come on.” He turned around to head into the woods and after another moment of hesitation, Gabriel followed him.

Once they were in the woods, Sam said, “Even if I did try to kill you, you’d just come back. And if I tried to just hurt you, you could take me. For a little guy, you’re pretty tough.”

“Thanks,” Gabriel replied warily. “Is that why you wanted to get me alone? To compliment me without any witnesses?”

“No.” Sam was looking out through the woods as they spoke, keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. “I wanted to ask you why you didn’t tell us straight out about the whole ‘not being able to die’ thing.”

He glanced at Gabriel as he said that to catch his reaction, noticed him swallow and avert his eyes. “I already told you, I did tell you guys. You just weren’t—“

“Cut the crap,” Sam snapped. “You dropped vague hints about it, but you didn’t outright say to us, ‘Don’t worry, even if something does attack, it can’t kill you’. Not when we fought the demons or when you suggested we take sleeping shifts in case something found us in the night. In fact, you have been purposely acting as if our lives are in danger and we have to protect ourselves, even though there is no real threat of anything happening to us. So tell me…why?”

Gabriel’s jaw was tight and he was staring straight ahead, fist tight around the handle of his blade, hanging by his side. For a moment, Sam felt like he wasn’t going to get any kind of response and he sighed internally, wondering why he ever thought he would get a straight answer out of this asshole.

But then Gabriel said, “Remember I told you guys I climbed a tree to see how far up it went?”

“Yeah?”

“I got about six stories up, never got tired, could’ve kept going if I wanted to. But I realized it was never going to end and I had such a powerful moment of… _emptiness—“_ the word was slow and drawn out, syllables chopped as if it wasn’t the word he was looking for but he couldn’t find a better one—“that it scared me and my hold on the tree slipped. I fell.”

“Shit,” Sam breathed.

“It was a nasty fall, and it seemed to last forever, but eventually I hit the ground. Hard, and on my back. It shattered a bunch of my bones, damaged my spine, but it didn’t kill me. I lay there, unable to move, for about two days. And during that time, I was laughing because I felt so stupid. Because I should have realized sooner that this was the perfect solution. I’d been looking for a way out since I’d gotten here and I never thought that killing myself might work.”

Sam’s mouth was dry, lip pressed into a hard line and picturing that horrible scene as Gabriel described it. That pang of sympathy and pity hit him again, drowning out some of the dislike he felt toward Gabriel.

“Imagine how pissed off I was when I woke up, probably a few moments later, all healed up and every bone back in its place, still lying on that forest floor.”

“That must have been horrible…” Sam thought back to a few minutes ago, when Dean had come back to life and the feeling of being trapped forever had crashed on him, like someone closing a cage door on him and throwing the key into a fire right before his eyes. “You must have been desperate.”

Gabriel swallowed and his face grew dark, turned away from Sam and mind somewhere else, somewhere cold and painful. “Thank Dad I died with this in my hands,” he muttered, fingers flexing on his angel blade, “so it came with me. I got so crazy that I started stabbing myself. Over and over. Do you know what it’s like to stab yourself with a sword, take it out, and do it again and again?”

Sam swallowed thickly, teeth grit. He shook his head.

“It’s not pleasant, and it’s not fun. It’s the scariest thing in the world, having something make you so crazy you’d start doing that. But you’re right, I was desperate and terrified and I wanted to get out, so I stabbed myself and died, then came back. Then I kept doing it. I spent hours kneeling on the ground, killing myself and coming back.”

“That’s why you didn’t tell us,” Sam muttered, voice rough. “You didn’t want us going crazy like that.”

“Figured you guys have been through enough. At least you guys have each other to keep yourselves from going crazy.”

Sam stopped, throat tight, and faced the angel. “Gabriel…”

“We should keep going.” Gabriel didn’t stop. “Got a lot of ground to cover. Or you can just stand here gaping like a fish until I come back. Your choice.”

It didn’t seem like Gabriel was going to stop or let Sam get any kind of pitying or sympathetic word in, which was expected, so Sam just followed him through the woods again. They walked on in silence, keeping their eyes strictly on the forest and very determinately not on each other.

At one point, Gabriel stopped and said, “There’s nothing more ahead. We should head west and then round back to base.”

“What happens if we keep going?” Sam asked curiously.

Gabriel shrugged. “You’ll reach the end of the island. Not much to see there.”

Sam raised his eyebrows pointedly and after a moment, Gabriel sighed, “All right. It’s not like we have anything better to do.”

They walked a bit farther, more light coming in as the trees became less dense. When they made it out of the trees, Sam’s breath left his lungs in a low exhale. The end of the island was actually an edge, with what seemed like a long drop down to an endless clear ocean below, looking just as crystalline and perfect as the pond. The sky was perfectly reflected, every single one of the billions of stars caught in the water. The crescent moon was at the center, white and resplendent.

Sam stepped up to the ledge until the toes of his boots were on the border and crouched down, picking up a pebble by his foot and throwing it into the water. It landed with a light _plop_ and Sam could just barely make out tiny ripples on the surface. When he looked back down at the ground, he wasn’t surprised to find the pebble right where he had gotten it from.

A glimmer of light caught Sam’s eyes and he looked down to where the water met the island, about half a mile below. The water didn’t lap at the side of the rock or move at all, but under it, far beneath the water, there was a flickering red and yellow glow. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing.

Gabriel came up beside him and looked down, frowning when he noticed the tiny light. “Not sure. I never noticed it before.” He turned away, touching Sam’s arm pointedly and heading towards the woods. “We should start heading back. The other two might start worrying.”

Sam spared another second to contemplate the strange glow before turning and following Gabriel. They walked in silence again, Sam turning over all the new information in his head. He thought about the Wendigo killing Dean, and Dean coming back. He thought about the sickening fear that still had its claws dug deep into Sam’s stomach. And Gabriel.

The things Gabriel had admitted to him, the sincerity and pain in his voice as he’d said them. It felt like an odd thing for Gabriel, and Sam thought yet again about how much the solitude and entrapment must have affected him, how much it changed the usually carefree angel. He was a lot more somber now and there was a darkness in his eyes that never seemed to go away.

As much as Sam tried to tell himself that he didn’t care about Gabriel and that he was supposed to hate him, he couldn’t help but feel kind of sad about that.

The trees were denser in this part of the forest, closer together and thicker. The moon was practically hidden by the branches, giving the pair very little light to see with. Sam looked to the side and barely made out the silhouette of his companion, but could hear his footsteps crunching leaves and snapping twigs. He couldn't see his face and for some reason, that comforted Sam, gave him enough courage to say what he said next.

"You know—" he cleared his throat— "I always knew there was something kind of...human about you. I always knew there was something redeemable in you, even after what you did to me." He took a deep breath and directed his words to the darkness. "I'm glad I was right."

The footsteps beside him stopped and Sam stopped too, for a horrible second thinking that something had snatched Gabriel up into the trees like the Wendigo had with Dean. But then Gabriel spoke.

"Is that...forgiveness I hear, Winchester?"

Sam rolled his eyes even though Gabriel couldn't see it. "Don't sound so smug. I'm just saying."

"What?" Gabriel insisted, and Sam could hear the smile in his voice, but at least he kept walking. "What are you saying? That you're over your childish little grudge against me?"

"I wouldn't call my grudge 'childish' considering you _did_ do some awful shit to me." Sam indulged in a smile. "But, yeah, I guess I'm over it."

They didn't say anything else the rest of the way.

***

"So, Cas and I have been talking," was how Dean started the conversation when they all met up at the big tree they had decided was their sleeping area, near the pond.

"Finally," Sam snorted under his breath and only Gabriel heard him. He chuckled a bit and the two of them exchanged an amused glance, which Dean noticed with a cocked brow but didn't comment on.

"I told him about seeing Jo," Dean continued, sitting down heavily at the base of a tree and stretching out. "And we think that if all these monsters and shit can get in _here,_ then we should be able to find a way to get out there."

Sam's eyebrows flew into his hair. "Out where?"

"Out to Heaven, of course." Dean shrugged. "We probably won't get our own personal Heavens like everyone else, but we've got some friends that might let us crash in theirs. We can go around travelling and meeting old friends, and make new friends in the process."

Gabriel looked perturbed and frowned at Dean, then at Cas. "You helped him come up with this brilliant plan?"

"As usual," Cas said, sounding like a parent with a blabbering child who had to constantly be explaining what his kid was going on about to strangers, "Dean is getting ahead of himself. I merely informed him that there are certain entrances in the planes that connect to the others."

"Is that true?" Sam asked, turning to Gabriel, who was frowning down at his knees.

"Sort...of...?" he replied slowly. "But it's not as easy as it sounds. The only creatures who know exactly where those backdoors are are Reapers and without the help of one, you don't really have a chance. And then there's the whole thing about certain links being narrower and harder to find than others...it's very theoretical."

"But is it possible?" Dean insisted, leaning forward and staring at Gabriel with intention.

Gabriel looked up at him, brows still creased. "Maybe. Possibly...it won't be easy, though. It might take a long time to find an entrance like that."

Dean snorted. "It's not like we've got anything _but_ time."

Gabriel grinned, but Sam could tell he wasn't convinced.

"It's settled then!" Dean announced, without actually settling anything with anybody.

"We'll start searching for the entrance to Heaven. All four of us. We're getting out of this wasteland."

No one seemed as enthusiastic as Dean about this practically impossible plan, but Dean's enthusiasm and determination was enough for all of them. He raised his fist into the air and said, "Cheers!" as if he were holding up a glass of beer and making a toast.

Grinning, Sam lifted his own hand, followed by Gabriel and Castiel.

"Cheers!"

***

Finding an entry to Heaven is not as easy as it sounds, and it doesn’t exactly sound like a picnic to begin with.

They searched and searched, keeping to the part of the island where they had seen Jo, where they could sometimes see the fog that moved and shifted around itself. They dubbed it 'the Veil', the thin boundary between Limbo and Heaven. It worked just like regular mist and walking through it didn’t take you anywhere, but Dean was convinced that the entrance to Heaven was somewhere near it. If the boundary was thin enough for them to see through, maybe there was a rip somewhere they could slip through. None of them were as hopeful or as confident as Dean was, but it didn't deter him.

They realized quickly that the other dimensions were linked in specific directions of the island. The Veil was at the eastern end of Limbo while the demons came in through the west, at the complete opposite end. There were a few more that had made it through since the first two and they got rid of them quickly enough. The Purgatory monsters, though, were more difficult.

According to Gabriel, monsters in their spiritual forms are not bound by earthly limitations. They are pure embodiments of the unnatural: faster, stronger, and much more vicious. They all came in from the north, so three of them kept to the west and north when scouting, since that's where they usually came from. Although Dean helped them to keep Limbo free of spirits that didn't belong there, it was obvious he was mostly interested in the east, searching for an exit.

For two weeks—Sam kept track of the time using the lunar phases, even though Gabriel had warned him not to—they fought off demons and vampires and a few werewolves here and there. It was mostly demons, though, and Sam thought bitterly that it was an ironic reflection of their lives on Earth. For two weeks, it went on like that. It became almost routine, sleeping for a few hours in shifts, getting up and scouting, killing anything that needed to be killed, swimming in the pond, and making any conversation they could to keep themselves entertained. Lucky for them, Castiel and Gabriel had millennia of existence full of stories. Gabriel, especially.

As much as Gabriel's pranks and Trickster days were a sensitive topic for Sam, he couldn't help but laugh along with the stories of all the people Gabriel had knocked down a peg during his centuries as Loki. It felt kind of cruel to laugh at Gabriel's victims with him, but they'd been dead for a while, Gabriel was dead, and Sam was dead. Everybody was dead now. Laughing at them didn't really seem to matter much when he considered that.

When they weren't talking, they were making up games to play to pass the time.

"What the hell are we doing?" Gabriel had laughed when they started an adaptation of 'Go Fish' with sticks and leaves. "Is this gonna be some sort of Lord of the Flies thing where we start out playing games and end up killing and torturing each other? Do we set the island on fire too?"

"Which one of us would be Jack?" Sam asked Gabriel, cocking his head at the archangel.

Gabriel closed his mouth and looked around at the three of them. Dean looked just as frightened as he did, and Castiel was sporting a confused frown.

"Cas, you got any brown leaves with a black smudge?" Gabriel had muttered after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

"Go fish."

"I ain't cutting off no pig's head," Dean mumbled to his handful of leaves and everyone burst out laughing except for Cas. They spent the rest of the game explaining to Castiel the story of Lord of the Flies.

It was easier than Sam had originally expected. He knew eventually he would get sick of having no one but the three of them around, would start craving contact with other people, would start craving all the human commodities like showers and televisions and food, even if he never got hungry. Sooner or later, it would get too much, but for now it was easy.

One of their favorite activities was finding things to do that they wouldn't have been able to do before with their restricting mortality. During one swim in the pond, Dean was daring Castiel to swim down as far as he could, see if he could touch the bottom. Gabriel interrupted saying that there probably wasn't one, but Dean splashed him and told him to shut up, then continued egging Castiel on.

After a while, Castiel just rolled his eyes and agreed, taking a deep breath and diving down. All of them watched for a while, staring at nothing but dark, still water. The silence went on for a while, none of them moving, waiting for Castiel to come back up. For a moment, Sam was afraid that he wouldn't, that maybe there was something under the water that none of them knew about, not even Gabriel, something that wouldn't let Cas come back to them.

Then a few bubbles rose to the surface, popped quietly and caused tiny ripples before the water went smooth again.

"Um?" Dean mumbled, frowning deeply.

"What do you think happened to him?" Sam asked, worry gnawing at his gut.

"Uh..." said a voice behind them and they all whirled around to find Cas sitting on the bank, wearing nothing but the black boxers he had been swimming in, dry and looking completely confused. "I believe I may have drowned," he said, voice rising up a bit at the end, making it sound like a question. He looked so perplexed that the three of them just stared at him for a moment before bursting into laughter simultaneously. He joined them a moment later, and Sam never thought that he would laugh until he cried after he was dead.

Naturally, being dead wasn't all fun and games and four full-grown men playing hide and seek between the trees.

A few weeks in, something made it through a gap, and it wasn't a demon or a Purgatory monster.

It was a human soul.

Sam had his knife half-raised when the woman screamed and flinched away, bringing her hands up in defense. He stopped and frowned at her, lowering his knife just a bit. Her dress was ratty and ripped, her hair was matted and tangled and her skin was pale and sick-looking, eyes red-rimmed and sunken.

"Please!" she sobbed, cowering next to a tree. "Please just stop! Just for a little bit! Let me rest for a moment, please!"

Sam swallowed, a nasty feeling in his stomach. "Who are you?"

"My n-name is Diana," she struggled, still curled around the tree as if it were a life-raft. "Just give me a few minutes to rest before you keep torturing me, _please._ "

"Torturing you?" Sam asked. "Are you from Hell?"

"I should have never made that deal," she wept, pressing her face into the rough bark. "I should never have done that. I was so stupid, so stupid..."

Putting his knife away, Sam stepped closer to her. She wasn't a demon and she wasn't a monster. She was just a lost soul that had ended up in Hell. "Hey, hey," he murmured comfortingly. "It's okay." He reached for her shoulder but stopped when she flinched. "I'm not gonna hurt you," he assured her. "You're not in Hell anymore."

Diana raised her head to look at him uncertainly. He gave her his most welcoming smile.

"Where am I?" she said, voice small and unsure.

"Limbo," he replied. His smile faltered as he realized that she didn't belong here. He didn't know how the others would react to her. It's not like they would _want_ to send her back to Hell, but he knew that she probably couldn't stay there with them.

"A-Are you gonna send me back?" she asked, fear cracking her voice.

Sam took a deep breath, smile sliding away entirely. "I...I don't know."

Diana tensed, fingernails dug into the tree bark as if she was waiting for Sam to grab her and drag her back into Hell.

"I don't want to send you back," Sam assured her quickly. "I just don't know if you can stay here. I don't know what happens to spirits in planes they don't belong..."

" _Don't make me go back!_ " she screeched. " _Please!_ I'm begging you! Let me stay here!"

Sam's heart lurched. "I...I'm going to talk to my friends. I'm gonna see if they agree to let you stay with us..."

"What if they say no?" she hissed, lips curling and eyes narrowing. "Are you just going to kick me out? Send me back to that...that... _Hell?_ "

Sam licked his lips. "I told you, I _don't know_ \--"

" _You're not sending me back there!"_ she shrieked, no longer sounding small and scared, but threatening and hysterical. "I won't let you!"

Suddenly, she leapt at Sam, hands latching onto his hair and toppling him to the ground, catching him off guard. He landed with an _oof_ and she fell on top of him, crushing his stomach. She started clawing at Sam, long fingernails scratching his face and neck, as she cried and screamed incoherently. Sam struggled against her, tried to get a grip on her wrists, but when he caught a glimpse of her face as she mauled him, he noticed her eyes were demon-black. She was much stronger than him for being half his size and he couldn't reach into his waistband to get his knife.

He kept struggling, trying to knock her off of him, but she suddenly went very still and toppled against him, dead. He looked over her shoulder and saw Gabriel, standing over them with his blade in his hand, eyes dark and mouth a straight line.

Sam groaned and blinked and the weight disappeared from on top of him.

"Nice face, Sam," Gabriel muttered, lips quirked slightly but the darkness was still in his eyes, ruining the full effect of the jibe. He held out a hand to help Sam up to his feet and once he was vertical again, Sam touched his fingers to a stinging part of his cheek and they came back with blood.

In a few moments, both the blood on his fingers and the stinging on his face and neck vanished.

"Good to know I'm not the only one who thinks Dean's plan is full of crap," Gabriel said, laughing dryly and putting his blade away.

"What the hell does that mean?" Sam asked defensively.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow at him. "'I don't know what happens to spirits in planes they don't belong'?"

Sam closed his mouth and averted his eyes.

"That's what I thought." Gabriel turned away and Sam followed. "You know Dean's plan is never going to work, for whatever reason, but you don't wanna be the one to go up to your brother and tell him Santa Claus isn't real."

Sam scoffed and rolled his eyes. "And you're too nice to do it?"

"When you're in a place like this, having hope is the only thing to keep you from going bonkers."

Sam reached out and grabbed Gabriel's shoulder, made him stop. He licked his dry lips. "This place has changed you, hasn't it?"

Gabriel turned around to look at him, sarcastic smirk in place but it looked wrong, like a picture frame on a wall that was just slightly off center, making the entire room look out of balance. "Why do you say that? Because I actually care? You know, I wasn't _always_ a dick, even when I was alive. It's just you only encountered me when I _was_ being a dick."

"No," Sam muttered. "It's not that...there's something... _broken,_ I guess. I don't know how to explain it, there's just something dark about you. And it's this place; it's changed you."

Gabriel's smirk slipped and Sam felt like the room was in balance again, but the lights had been switched off and no one had even been inside that room for years. He turned around, shrugged Sam's hand off and kept walking. "Give it time, Sam," he said quietly, voice carrying in the ever-present silence. "This place will change you too."

***

The moon was full. The forest was washed in a bright light that highlighted ever branch and every leaf, casting an eerie glow. It turned their skin pale white and sickly, made shadows darker and deeper. Sam had imagined that once the moon was full and there was more light to see with, the forest would look friendlier, more welcoming and bright. He found that it was much more frightening like this.

It seemed like the others agreed, because for the few days that the moon was at its brightest, they all became more withdrawn. Conversations became forced, games became practically impossible. There was some kind of tension in the air that made it harder to breathe, made them feel even more trapped.

Sam preferred being alone during those days. Seeing the others just as subdued and troubled as him just made it worse. So he took off around the island when the moon was at its fullest. No one seemed to mind, none of them barely said anything and Sam figured this is what Gabriel had meant when he said the island was going to change them too.

Sam tried to find a routine to keep him grounded, something to keep his mind from floating off into the terrifying worlds Limbo seemed to inspire. He found a nice path to run through, like he was going for a morning jog. He played his favorite workout music in his mind as he ran. He found a relatively open area to do push-ups and sit-ups, found a sturdy branch to do pull-ups. Even though he still felt the burn in his muscles, he knew there was no more toning or muscle-building, but it kept him grounded. Made him feel human.

After working out, he liked sitting on the cliff edges, letting his legs dangle off the side, staring out at the vast and endless ocean and the sky full of stars. He didn’t recognize any of the constellations he had known when he was alive, so he made up his own. He got pretty good at imagining whales and dolphins jumping out of the water in the distance, and he smiled down at the colorful fish he pictured swimming under the surface.

On his way back to 'base' as they'd started calling it, Sam brushed his fingers against the rough bark of the trees. He took a turn that he had learned a few days into going off by himself and followed the familiar path that wasn't really a path unless you knew where you were going. He found what he was looking for and quirked his head at it, just like he always did when he came to see it.

'It' was a pair of trees that were different than the rest. Most of the trees in Limbo just shot straight up into the sky. Some of the trees were a little crooked, or leaned in a certain direction slightly, but Sam had never encountered another pair of trees that looked like these. Their bases were pressed together, as if they had grown together like conjoined twins. At about four feet up, their trunks curled around each other, bark practically melded together like a couple of snakes, and then continued growing up straight, trunks still pressed together. It was a curious discoveryof Sam's and he had meant to ask Gabriel about it, since Gabriel knew almost everything about this place and probably had some kind of explanation, but he had never gotten around to it for some reason. Just like every time Sam came to visit his little discovery, he stepped up to the trees, ran his fingers down the crease where they were joined, staring curiously at them. And just like every other time, Sam walked away and continued on to the base.

There was one day where his little routine was disrupted by something odd. It was just when the moon was starting to wane again, but it was still bright enough to be creepy. Sam was just a little ways away from the base when he saw something shifting at the base of a tree some yards from him. It was partially hidden by the tree so Sam couldn't see what it was, but took his knife out in case it was another lost spirit; he had learned his lesson with Diana.

Approaching it carefully, Sam held his breath, watching it for any movement. It was completely still, but it was too clear and round to be a rock or a boulder. It didn't move even as Sam approached it, and once he got close enough to see, he let out a relieved breath when he saw that it was just Cas.

"Shit, Cas," he breathed, laughing a bit. "You scared the hell out of me."

Castiel didn't reply. He was sitting with his back against the tree, knees drawn up to his chest. What Sam had seen had been his shoulder, the tan trenchcoat looking bleached in the moonlight. Castiel was just sitting there, motionless, face blank as he stared at the tree in front of him. His hands were on the ground, fingers buried in the soil.

"Cas?" Sam asked warily, nudging his friend's shoulder. Still, Castiel didn't move. Sam moved to stand in front of him and crouched down, getting at eye-level with him. Castiel just seemed to stare right through him.

Sam grabbed Cas' shoulders and shook him, but Castiel didn't react. He called his friend's name, over and over, but it just looked like Castiel was comatose. If he hadn't been breathing, Sam would've thought he was dead.

"Sam?!" he heard Dean's voice through the woods. "Sammy, are you okay?"

Sam shot up and turned to the direction where his brother's voice was coming from. "Dean! Over here! It's Cas! I don't know what's wrong with him!"

There was the sound of hurried footsteps, twigs snapping quickly and branches being pushed aside roughly and Dean broke through the trees next to them, Gabriel right behind him. Dean took one look at Sam, looking like a scared child, and then turned to Cas, who was still doing his impersonation of a vegetable.

"Cas?" Dean said gruffly, crouching as Sam had in front of him. "Cas, can you hear me?" He shook Castiel, and Sam couldn't muster up the words to say he'd already tried that, that he looked completely gone.

" _Cas_!" Dean shouted, and lifted his hand to smack Castiel straight across the face.

Miraculously, it worked. Castiel blinked blearily, frowning confusedly at Dean

"Cas?" Dean muttered.

It seemed like something had breathed life back into Castiel. The cloudiness was gone from his blue eyes, his lips parted slightly, and his chest heaved with a deep inhale. His fingers twitched and lifted from the soil, although to Sam it looked more like the dirt slipped away from his skin instead of the other way around.

"You okay, buddy?" Dean asked him, smiling like he did when Sam had been a kid and scraped his knee, hand coming up to Cas' cheek.

"I...I think so..." Castiel's voice was gruffer than usual, but he sounded all right for the most part. "What happened?"

"You checked out on us, man," Dean chuckled lightly, but he sounded just as unsure as Castiel did. Sam looked to Gabriel as if expecting him to explain, like he always did when things got weird, but Gabriel wasn't talking, just staring at Castiel blankly, jaw locked and eyes a burnt yellow color. "Don't do that again, thought we'd lost ya."

"I...apologize?" Castiel said it like a question, like he wasn't sure if he should be sorry or not, because it's not like he even knew what had happened to him.

Dean laughed and helped Cas to his feet, saying, "Let's go swimming for a bit. Some nice fresh water would be good for your head."

Castiel nodded, still looking dazed, and let Dean lead him along.

Once the pair was gone through the woods, Sam turned to Gabriel.

"You gonna explain what the hell that was?" he asked.

Gabriel pursed his lips and shook his head a bit. "Nope."

"Gabriel!" Sam called, just as the angel was turning away, making him stop. "What's happening to us?"

"I warned you, didn't I?" Gabriel snapped, a bit harshly.

"Did that happen to you?" He gestured at the spot where Castiel had been sitting and Gabriel glared at it like it had done him great personal harm.

"There's more than one kind of Hell, kiddo," he murmured, but it didn't sound like he was talking to Sam.

He turned around again and Sam leapt forward, grabbed him and spun him around, holding him in place by both shoulders. "Talk to me!" he demanded, staring straight at Gabriel's eyes. They were brightening up a bit, the burnt color giving way to something more familiar, a sparkling gold. "Tell me what's going to happen to us."

Gabriel sighed irritably and shoved Sam's hands off of him. "Something you can't stop, so don't bother trying to. Just...just live as well as you can for as long as you can and when you think you can't keep going, let it happen."

"Let what happen?" Sam frowned, resisting the urge to shake him like he had done with Cas earlier. "Whatever it is that happened to you?"

Gabriel glared at him. "Hasn't happened to me yet, but it's a matter of time. We're dead, Sam." His voice was sad now. "Eventually, we're going to have to accept it and let ourselves rest. We're just too stubborn to do it sooner rather than later."

Sam frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't like it when you're like this. You're not you."

Gabriel snorted. "You don't like it when I'm me anyways."

"That's not true." Gabriel cocked an eyebrow and Sam sighed. "I've never completely disliked you. I hated you when we were alive, but I always found you interesting. I told you, I always knew there was something redeemable in you. When we're hanging out by the pond, listening to your stories and playing those dumb games, I feel like..." He took a deep breath, tried to find the right words. "I feel like we're friends; I actually like you."

Gabriel shifted on his feet, uncomfortable.

"But then something like this happens and you close off, like a turtle in its shell, and you look dark and...dead. Like a light's been turned off. That's what I don't like."

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Getting kinda touchy-feely there, Sammy-boy. Isn't that against the Winchester code or something?"

Sam glared, but there wasn't much heat behind it. Gabriel's tone was light again, teasing, and even though there was something still tense about him, it wasn't as present. "I'm dead. What does it matter?"

Gabriel grinned.

"Are you ever going to tell me why you never disliked me?" Sam asked, apropos to nothing, the memory of their conversation that first night coming back to him.

"Huh?" Gabriel frowned, clearly not following.

"That first night we were here, I couldn't sleep and I asked you if your dislike of me wasn't going to make it difficult for you." Gabriel's frown cleared as he remembered, lips quirking into a smile. "You said you had reasons to like me, but didn't explain. We just gonna add that to the list of things I'd like to know but you're not going to tell me?"

Gabriel patted Sam's shoulder and said, "Maybe someday, kiddo." Then he winked and turned, walking away.

Sam paused, swallowed thickly as his stomach tightened, and followed him.

***

As the moon waned again, being around each other became easier. Life (if their existence could be called that), however, did not. Demons and monsters came through the gaps much more frequently as time went on, but that didn't bother any of them. In fact, they welcomed it. Fighting and killing monsters gave them something to do between bouts of mind-numbing boredom, which is what really made life difficult for them.

Dean, growing ever more frustrated with the lack of progress in the search for and exit, suggested not killing the monsters as soon as they stumbled in. He would let the monsters run around for a while, play a game of cat and mouse with them, maybe let them hang around for a day or two before catching them by surprise and finally killing them. Sometimes they got him first, but he just came back to life and stabbed them, laughing about the looks of shock on their faces later on.

Gabriel and Castiel didn't really get behind Dean's new game, and Sam tried, figuring it would resemble his life on Earth enough to be almost comforting. But he couldn't get as enthusiastic about it as Dean did.

A pair of vampires popped in from Purgatory one day and Dean's grin was absolutely wicked when he spotted them.

Blood still flowed in their systems and their hearts still beat in their chests, so it didn't take long for the vampires to realize that they weren't alone in this strange new world. Once they did, Dean smirked and ran, the two vampires giving chase almost immediately.

Dean ran and ran, cut a familiar path through the woods he knew so well by now, and the monsters chased him, hissing and snarling, thinking he was the prey and they the predators when, really, it was the other way around.

Sam didn't follow Dean's lead, but carefully tracked them through the forest, keeping a safe distance but close enough to jump in and help when Dean finally decided to get rid of them.

When Dean came out to a denser part of the forest, he stopped, acting like he had been cornered, and turned to face down the vampires. Sam was just a little ways away, watching the scene through the trees. The vampires appeared a moment later, and Sam could just make out their Cheshire grins and hear their cold chuckles.

Sam knew Dean didn't want him coming in yet, knew he wanted to draw it out a bit longer, so Sam stayed where he was and gripped his knife. He watched, spine tingling and muscles tense, as one of the vampires lunged at Dean. Instinct and reflex had a scream clawing at his throat, but he pushed it down, reminding himself that Dean wasn't really in danger.

Knowing his brother would be all right didn't really make the sight of a vampire tearing into his throat any easier to bear, and Sam turned away to avoid seeing it happen. When he looked again, Dean was dead, lying in a bloody heap at the base of a tree with two vampires looming over him. A moment and a blink later and the blood was gone, the gash was closed, and Dean was shooting to his feet with the blade in his hand, plunging it into the throat of the vampire that had bitten him before it could react.

The vampire crumbled to the floor and Sam moved a bit closer, ready to take the second one. He just stared down with horror at the body of his companion, then at Dean, and when it looked back down at the body, it had vanished and he looked even more terrified. Dean smirked at him, a dark evil thing that sent a cold shiver down Sam's spine, and the vampire took off running.

This time, Dean was the one chasing, and he did it with a look of twisted glee. Sam rushed after them, a sick feeling in the pit of his gut forming.

When he caught up with Dean and his prey, the sight Sam found made his stomach roll. Dean had the vampire pinned against a tree, struggling against him as Dean landed blow after blow of his blade on the thing's neck, hacking at it violently with his knife, not big or sharp enough to behead it right away. Dean was grunting with the force, but he was putting his entire weight on it, each blow landing with all the force he had in his body, violent and terrifying.

"Dean!" Sam shouted, but Dean didn't stop. There was blood everywhere.

"DEAN!" he cried again, louder now, and Dean's arm stopped, mid-blow. Sam stepped forward quickly and pulled him away, the vampire falling to the ground, choking and writhing in pain, clutching at his almost-severed throat. Sam bent down next to him and quickly plunged his own knife into the undamaged part of its throat, killing him quickly. He closed his eyes until he was sure the vampire's body had vanished and opened his eyes, breathing heavily.

Sam straightened up and faced Dean, whose face was pale and eyes were a dark green, unfocused, mouth slack. There was no more blood on him, but Sam could still see the phantom traces of it in his memory, the image of his brother soaked in bright red blood as he brutally and mercilessly killed a defenseless, frightened creature still vivid in his memory. Dean had spent ten years in Hell torturing souls and it had never really left him; it had followed him after death.

"Dean?" Sam tired gently and Dean's eyes flashed to him, but didn't seem to really be looking at him. After a moment of wordless staring, Dean dropped his knife on the ground, then silently turned around and walked away from Sam.

Deciding to give Dean his space, knowing that he couldn't really get himself in trouble in Limbo, Sam picked up the knife from the ground, pocketed it along with his, and headed back to base.

He found Cas and Gabriel there, chatting lightly, and both of them realized something bad had happened as soon as Sam stepped through the trees alone, a haunted look on his face. He explained what had happened with the vampires, described to them how Dean had gone berserk, then walked away into the trees looking as if he were in some sort of trance.

Gabriel sat down next to Sam after Sam had settled down, gripped Sam's arm and squeezed it comfortingly. For some reason, Sam didn't push him away, but instead leaned into the touch, feeling the tension in his body loosen. Castiel sat across from them, looking troubled. He had tried to approach the subject of his own trance-like state a few weeks back with Gabriel some time after it happened, but Gabriel hadn't been very helpful.

After a few hours with Dean still missing, Sam had had enough and gotten up, Castiel following suit. They had agreed to go out and search for him in opposite directions, and Gabriel would stay at the base in case Dean showed up there. But it seemed that Dean was actively trying to avoid them, because after hours of searching the tiny island, neither Cas nor Sam found him.

They both returned to base more anxious than when they had left, and Gabriel tried to comfort them by telling them that it's not like Dean was going to get himself killed or anything, but that didn't make either of them feel better. Castiel, in fact, turned right back around and headed into the woods again, determined to find Dean.

Sam was about to do the same, but Gabriel grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

"Just breathe, Sam," he said, eyes soft and expression serious and suddenly, it became extremely hard to do so.

Sam's throat locked up as everything that had been hanging over his head crashed in on him. Whatever it was that he was constantly seeing in Gabriel, what he had seen in Castiel that one time, it had caught up to his brother. The darkness was infesting him, consuming him, and it was going do the same with all four of them until they were something twisted and unrecognizable.

"Sam, Sam," Gabriel was saying, reaching out and grabbing Sam by both arms and Sam realized that he was hyperventilating, legs weak and knees buckling as he stumbled back, falling against a tree and Gabriel followed him, held him steady. "Sam, calm down."

Gabriel guided Sam down to sit at the base of the tree and crouched beside him, gripping his arms and grounding him. Sam kept his focus on Gabriel's face, forced his breathing to ease.

"Wh-What's happening to us?" he choked out, the sound more of a rasp than an actual voice.

"I..." Gabriel opened and closed his mouth as if searching for words, but gave up, bit his lip and settled for an "I'm sorry.” Sam was still shaking, breaths still coming with difficulty. Gabriel's hand strayed from Sam's arm and up to his hair, and Sam jerked away instinctively, uncomfortable with the gesture. Gabriel paused, hand hovering, and watched Sam, who felt like his skin was vibrating. After a moment, Sam eased up a bit and Gabriel tried again, slowly pushing his fingers in Sam's hair and combing it out gently. The feeling was soothing, soft, and Sam felt himself relaxing completely, the tingling in his bones and the trembling of his hands subsiding.

"Are you ever going to tell us?" Sam said, voice low and eyes on the ground. "I don't understand why you won't just tell us what's going to happen to us."

Gabriel sat down, continued the small movements of his fingers in Sam's hair. "It's going to be even harder for you if you know," he said. "You just have to trust me, Sam."

And Sam did. Without even thinking about it. And it scared him a little.

Sam forced himself to sleep after he had calmed down completely and Gabriel didn't stray too far from his side. When Sam started fidgeting, struggling to stay asleep, Gabriel returned his fingers to his hair and ran them through it gently again. Sam was half-awake, fully aware of what he was doing, but he didn't complain. Didn't push him away.

Castiel showed up some time later, still without Dean, looking lost and dejected. He lay himself down some feet away from where Sam was asleep and rested.

Dean didn't come back for another two days. When he did, he didn't look any of them in the eye. He took his knife from Sam, went to sleep, and when he woke up, acted like nothing had happened. No one said a word.

***

Castiel was too preoccupied with shadowing Dean’s every move, Gabriel was being stubbornly quiet and unhelpful, and there was no sense in even trying to touch the subject with Dean. But Sam felt like he was going to go crazy sooner rather than later if he didn’t talk to someone about what had happened.

“I’ve been coming here for days,” Sam breathed, voice heavy with relief when Jo’s smiling face appeared to him. “You never showed up.”

“ _I guess it’s a thing of chance_ ,” Jo shrugged. “ _It’s not something that just appears when you want it to.”_ She took a good look at Sam, head cocked a bit, and frowned. “ _There’s something wrong. Did something happen? Where’s Dean?”_

And Sam, weary and tired and overwhelmed, broke down. It all spewed out with no dam, nothing held back. Words tumbled and flowed and Jo listened intently, trying to catch everything Sam said as he just rambled and rambled on and on. He paced and gesticulated and tugged at his hair, he shuffled his feet and looked at the ground instead of her face. He barely stopped, only briefly to gather his thoughts or catch his breath.

When he finally stopped, took a deep breath and exhaled, a sound like the air out of a tire that was so filled it was on the verge of exploding, he raised his eyes to meet Jo, who was watching him with wide eyes, eyebrows practically in her hair.

“ _Wow,_ ” she breathed when she was sure he had finished. “ _That’s insane. And you absolutely can’t talk to Dean about it?”_

Sam gave her a look.

“ _Right. Nevermind.”_ She crossed her arms and shrugged her shoulders. “ _I honestly don’t think there’s anything you can do about it other than that. Talk to him. It won’t be easy, but you can just…corner him, can’t you? It can’t be hard. From what you’ve told me, it’s not like he’s got a lot of place to run.”_

Sam sighed heavily. He had already known that would be the only option, but he’d been hoping there would be something he hadn’t thought of that Jo could point out to him, most likely in a very condescending manner, but with an underlying sweetness that would make Sam feel at home again.

“I guess you’re right,” Sam grumbled.

“ _Now about your other problem,”_ Jo started, mouth quirking.

“Other problem?” he frowned.

“ _Were you even listening to yourself babble or was your mouth just working without your brain having a say-so in it?”_

Sam gaped. “What else did I say?”

Jo shrugged again. “ _Nothing much. If going on in detail about your extreme hard-on for that archangel you used to hate is ‘nothing’.”_

Blood flooded Sam’s face and he spluttered, shifting on his feet as if preparing to run away. It’s not like Jo could chase him. “I did… _not_ say that,” he stuttered, voice sounding fake and slightly hysterical to his own ears.

“ _Well, no. You didn’t describe your hard-on in detail, which I thank you for. But you did say something about feeling safe when Gabriel comforted you while Dean had his little freak out. You said having him there made you feel a lot better about it, that you would’ve probably lost your mind if he hadn’t been there. That you really liked the way he ran his fingers through your hair—“_

 _“_ I never said I liked it!” Sam protested indignantly.

“ _But he did do it, right?”_

“Yes.”

“ _Did you tell him to stop?”_

Sam paused. “No.” He sounded guilty.

“ _Then you liked it.”_

Sam grumbled.

“ _You clearly don’t hate him anymore.”_

“That doesn’t mean I’m in love with him.” This conversation was not going at all how Sam had expected. Or wanted.

“ _I didn’t say you’re in love with him, but you’re definitely into him.”_

Sam glared at her. “What makes you think that?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “ _You described the exact color of his eyes at least five times.”_

“That’s not—what I meant was—I was trying to—“ He couldn’t think of an excuse.

Jo smirked. “ _That’s what I thought. So, what are you going to do about your little crush?”_

“I don’t know,” he shrugged helplessly, knowing full well that he had just admitted to there being a crush in the first place.

“ _I say, you put the moves on the guy._ After _you settle everything with Dean, of course.”_

Sam sighed, the sounding ending in a small laugh. “Why did I ever think coming to you was going to be a good idea?”

“ _Because you’ve always been one of the smartest people I know._ ”

***

As Sam made his way back to the base, he heard Dean laughing.

The sound made Sam pause. There was no cruelty to it, no sharp edge of hysteria or insanity. It was a genuine bark of laughter, sincere amusement at something.

When he emerged from the trees, he caught Dean sitting at the base of the big tree, practically plastered to Castiel’s side, laughing at something, Cas’ own grin small and almost guilty. Sam had no idea what had been said or why it was so funny, but he didn’t much care. It filled him with elation just to see his brother like this again.

Across from them, Gabriel was smiling too, twirling his blade in his fingers for something to do. He turned his grin on Sam when he heard him and Sam felt a ridiculous swooping sensation in his gut, remembering Jo’s words. He plopped himself down next to Gabriel, smiled at his brother and the angel.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“I was telling Dean about the first time I came to Earth and…” He looked slightly guilty again, so Dean finished for him.

“And how he accidentally made an entire species go extinct,” Dean said between chuckles. “Go on, tell Sam.”

As Castiel talked, Sam leaned his shoulder against Gabriel’s, beaming mentally when Gabriel didn’t pull away. He caught Dean’s eye, and Dean’s smile slid into something softer, not laughing anymore. He nodded slightly and Sam nodded back, then they both turned their attention back to Cas.

It was a reassurance and an apology at the same time, Sam knew. Dean was aware how far he’d fallen and he was sorry for it, but he was also okay. It wasn’t a promise that it wouldn’t happen again, but that could come later.

This was enough for Sam. Words had never been their strong suit. Jo had been wrong, but he wasn’t about to go and tell her that.

***

“The stars are different wherever you’re standing on Earth,” Sam muttered, shifting the arm he had his head pillowed on.

"Hmm?"

"If the sky here is a reflection of the one on Earth, _where_ on Earth? The sky is different in different parts of the Earth, and the stars are always moving. These stars move, but they never change. So which sky are we seeing right now?" He turned his head to look at Gabriel, who was lying next to him, studying the stars. "America's? Italy's? Australia's, maybe?"

Gabriel grinned. "Eden. The first piece of Earth created by God. These are the stars that the Earth first saw upon creation."

"Really?"

"That's my best guess. It was kind of a long time ago, I was too young to remember."

Sam thought about that statement for a while, then made an unattractive snorting sound, then promptly burst into laughter.

“Hey,” frowned Gabriel. “What’s so funny, Sasquatch?”

Speaking through chuckles, Sam said, “Nothing…’s just…picturin’ you as a little baby angel with little baby bird wings. ‘S pretty adorable.”

Gabriel smiled at him. “I was the cutest baby angel. Best-behaved, too.”

“Bullshit,” Sam said in disbelief.

“Not at all. I was the quiet, straight-laced one. Hell, even Raphael was wilder than me. Until I went through my rebellious teenage phase, of course.”

“When you ran away from home?”

Gabriel nodded curtly, lips pressed together and Sam kicked himself mentally.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

“It’s fine,” Gabriel replied, smiling a bit. “It doesn’t matter anymore, does it? None of it does. Of course, at the time, it was the hardest decision I ever had to make. I was almost as attached to my brothers as you are to Dean. _Almost,_ ” he emphasized, clearly mocking him and Sam elbowed him in the side.

“Did you have a favorite?” Sam asked tentatively, wondering if he was pushing his luck by asking these things. Gabriel never talked about his family.

“Lucifer,” the angel answered without hesitation. “He was my favorite, which made it extra depressing when he stabbed me.” There was a pause, a flare of nostrils, a deep breath, and a slow exhale. Still an open wound. “He taught me everything. I remember he taught me to fly…”

For the next hour or so, Sam lay on his side, listening to Gabriel talk and talk and talk. About Heaven, about Lucifer and Michael, about Raphael, about the arrival of the younger angels. Not once did Gabriel mention the darker, wrong side of the Heaven he ran away from. He didn’t mention the corruption, his brothers’ fighting, the detached destruction of humans in the name of holiness. It was all love, music, beauty.

There was light in Gabriel’s eyes, in his voice as he spoke, in his bright smile and Sam felt so happy listening to him, safe and warm. He no longer felt trapped, just listening to Gabriel talk and asking interspersed questions, which Gabriel answered so enthusiastically. It was like inhaling again after so long of holding his breath.

After Gabriel finished speaking, there was a long moment of silence, where Gabriel just stared at the sky, lost in his memories. Scared to ruin the delicate moment, Sam shuffled a bit closer and said quietly, “You’ve never talked about your family before. Well, you have. Just never without some kind of sarcasm or insult.”

“I’ve always been angry at them.” Gabriel shrugged slightly. “Just pure pettiness. But now that I’m dead, what’s the point of holding on to that kind of pettiness?”

“Have you talked to Cas about Heaven like this?”

Gabriel turned to look at him, frowning slightly. “I figured that would depress the kid too much.”

“I think he’d like it,” Sam said softly. “Knowing you’ve always cared.”

“He knows that,” he grumbled defensively and Sam raised an eyebrow. “Maybe.”

Sam raised his eyebrows and Gabriel made a face at him, making him laugh. They were quiet for a moment and then Sam said awkwardly, “Thank you. For…uh…sharing that with me and all…”

“You’re easy to talk to.” The way he said that, as if it were just a simple statement of fact instead of one of his usual dirty innuendoes or mockingly flirtatious comments, made Sam’s stomach feel light and airy. But something kept him from completely enjoying that warm feeling he was filled with.

“If it’s so easy to tell me things,” he said, a bit sharply, “then why don’t you tell me the things I want to know?”

Gabriel gave him a sour look, as if Sam was being purposely stupid and he knew the answer to that question already. “One thing has nothing to do with the other.” Sam didn’t reply, just stared expectantly at him. “You’re never going to let it go, are ya?”

“Nope.”

“You are the most frustrating human ever, you know that?” Sam was happy to note that he didn’t sound particularly angry. “One minute we’re having a perfectly nice conversation and the next you’re being a stubborn jackass.” There was a strange kind of fondness hiding behind the irritation in Gabriel’s voice that made Sam smile.

“Do you know Dante?” Gabriel asked without preamble, changing the subject so suddenly that Sam couldn’t follow and could only reply with an eloquent “Huh?”

“ _Dante,_ ” Gabriel repeated, snapping his fingers in front of Sam’s face. “Keep up, slowpoke. Divine Comedy?”

“Oh.” Sam frowned. “Yes? But don’t change the subje—”

“I’m not. Did you ever read it?” Sam nodded. “Canto Four, twenty-second stanza. ‘We had not paused as he spoke, but held our road and passed meanwhile beyond a press of souls crowded about like trees in a thick wood.’”

Sam stared, even more confused. All he could think of to say was, “You know The Divine Comedy by heart?”

“In the original Italian, English, Spanish, French, and every other language it’s been translated into. Angels kind of automatically absorb information, so I memorize every text I’ve ever read instantly.” Gabriel grinned. “That includes all seven Harry Potter books, which is probably my proudest addition to my mental library.”

Sam couldn’t fight his own grin, mirroring Gabriel’s. “No one likes a bragger. Now, explain. What does that verse have to do with what’s going to happen to us here?”

“That’s where Dante describes walking through Limbo, guided by Virgil. Over the centuries, slight mistranslations caused technicalities to be lost, so people thought he was just being metaphorical. They thought he was comparing the amount of souls in Limbo to an abundance of trees in a forest.” Gabriel studied Sam’s face, waiting for him to put the pieces together. “Dante was actually being very literal.”

Sam’s mouth formed an ‘o’ as he furrowed his brows and thought about it. “So…Dante wasn’t saying that the souls were _like_ trees…he was saying that—“ His lips parted and his brow smoothed out. “The souls _were_ trees?”

Gabriel nodded solemnly. “Over time, the souls stranded here grow roots and leaves and spend an eternal slumber as trees.”

Sam sat up and looked around at the trees surrounding them. The thought that each and every one of them had at one point been a living, human soul made his mouth go dry, his head spin, and his stomach clench.

“This one time, I fell asleep on the ground,” Gabriel was saying, eyes not looking at Sam and focused far away. “At least, I thought I was sleeping. But ever since that one time Cas took a vacation out of his brain—“ Sam shuddered, remembering—“I’ve wondered if I wasn’t like that and just didn’t realize it. Point is, I woke myself up somehow. I found my fingers and feet deep in the soil, and I couldn’t pull them out. After a moment, the ground seemed to…crawl away from me…and I managed to get them out and stand up.”

Sam swallowed, horror filling every molecule in his body.

“I’d grown roots and I barely managed to stop it from happening. I went crazy, just like the time I fell out of the tree. I felt scared and trapped and like I’d never been in a worse place in my entire life. Two days later, and you three broke the friggin’ world and crash-landed here.”

 _Two days._ Only two days between that horrible moment that must have shaken Gabriel to the core and when Sam had seen him. In retrospect, Gabriel had been incredibly put-together. Sam was sure he wouldn’t have been so composed so soon after an episode like that. It definitely explained what had happened to Gabriel to make him like this and Sam found himself cursing this wretched place for taking the light from the angel.

“I can’t even imagine what that must have been like,” Sam muttered.

“Remember how I told you there’s more than one kind of Hell, Sam?” Gabriel’s voice was soft, almost a whisper, and Sam nodded. “I was wrong. Dad was smart when he made these worlds. Each one of them does something different to you after you die. Heaven gives you everything you ever wanted, Hell gives you everything you wished you’d never get, and Purgatory strips you down to your purest, most basic instinct.  But Limbo…Limbo changes you so that it’s like you never even existed at all.”

Sam inhaled, lungs feeling bruised.

“Angels have lived since the beginning of time.” Gabriel’s eyes shone, reflecting the starry sky above. “I always thought immortality would be our biggest crux, just like all the cheesy supernatural romance movies tell you. But then I was suddenly faced with the prospect of not even _existing_ , all those millennia I’ve lived, all for nothing. I’ve never felt fear like that before, and I cried. I cried for myself and what was going to become of me, and I cried for my brothers and sisters that have already met that fate.”

Sam shuffled a bit closer to Gabriel, but didn’t say anything. What does someone even say to a thing like that?

There was only silence and darkness for a while, and Sam brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. Gabriel still lay on the ground, staring unseeingly up at the starry sky, and watching him, Sam pictured him spacing out like Castiel had and he was struck by the fear of losing Gabriel like that.

“If it’s any consolation,” Sam whispered, finally deciding what to say, “I’ll always know you existed.”

Gabriel smiled softly and Sam decided he wanted to kiss him. It should have surprised him how easily and naturally that thought came to his head, but it just felt like the most obvious choice.

There was a question in Gabriel’s eyes as Sam leaned over him, hair falling gently around his face and long enough to tickle Gabriel’s cheeks. Sam’s eyes flickered to Gabriel’s lips and he paused, waiting, hoping Gabriel would lean up and close the distance. But Gabriel didn’t, just stared at Sam confusedly.

Sam cleared his throat slightly. “You know, if you don’t kiss me, the next few centuries are gonna get kinda awkward.”

Gabriel laughed, head thrown back, and the sound sparked across Sam’s skin, happy and warm. Then Gabriel’s hand was in his hair, pulling him down lower, and his jaw was angled forwards so he could press his lips to Sam’s, soft and dry. Sam’s hand cupped Gabriel’s cheek and kissed him like he wanted to keep him.

As they kissed on the soft grass, it felt like the world around them had finally come to life. If Sam really focused on how he felt as Gabriel’s mouth moved against his and how his hands touched him, he could almost feel a breeze on his skin and the warmth of a sun on his back. He could almost hear the quiet sounds of a tranquil forest.

The world was just as silent and static as it had ever been, but for a moment everything felt alive.

***

It had been an odd experience telling Dean and Castiel what had happened. Sam mostly flustered in the background while Gabriel announced, loudly and obnoxiously, to Dean that he had ‘corrupted his sweet little brother’. Sam very indignantly resented those words.

When Dean got all uppity about Gabriel doing inappropriate things to his brother, Gabriel just smugly informed him that it had been Sam that had initiated it.

Sam just shrugged as Dean stared at him, looking slightly disturbed.

“Well, thank God you hate him, Sammy,” he mocked. “I’d hate to see what you’d do if you actually liked him.”

Sam rolled his eyes, slipped his arm over Gabriel’s shoulder and said with a smirk, “At least I had the balls to go after my angel. Whereas you’ve been tiptoeing around it for—what?—two years now?”

Gabriel made a sympathetic hissing noise. “Ouch.”

Dean’s face turned bright red and Castiel’s eyes widened. He ducked his head, mumbled a mild congratulations at Sam and Gabriel, then turned to walk away into the woods. Sam gave a very pissed off looking Dean a patronizing look and cocked his head, motioning for him to go after Cas. After a moment, Dean grumbled something unintelligible under his breath and headed into the woods, calling Cas’ name.

Gabriel laughed and tugged Sam down to kiss him. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

Which reminded him. “Come on,” he murmured, smiling. “We’ve got some things to talk about.”

He took Gabriel to the edge of the island, sat him down with his legs dangling over the edge of the cliff, then sat behind him with his own legs on either side of Gabriel’s. It was maybe a little too soon for this kind of comfort between them, but after months of having as much physical contact as four men could have without having some kind of crisis, it felt nice to be able to be close like this with someone again.

“I have questions,” he said, chin hooked over Gabriel’s shoulder. “And you’re going to give me answers. No more of that ‘maybe some other day, kiddo’ crap.”

Gabriel chuckled and Sam felt it in his own chest. “Are you going to be this demanding and pushy all the time? Because I gotta say, I think I’m going to enjoy it.”

Sam bit his shoulder. “I’m serious.” He was still smiling. “Either you answer me or I push you off the edge.” He gave Gabriel’s back a little shove for emphasis.

“I’ll take you down with me, asshole.”

“First question.” His arms wrapped around Gabriel’s middle, his lips moved against Gabriel’s neck. “You said you never hated me, that you never had reason to. You only ever had reason to like me. What did you mean by that?”

Gabriel tensed in his arms and was silent for so long that Sam was about to remind him of the whole ‘pushing off the cliff’ thing.

“We’d been waiting for your birth since the day the Earth was created,” Gabriel answered softly. “Since the birth of humans, their death has always been planned. The angels were meant to protect Cain and Abel’s line, ensure certain pairings, certain births and certain deaths, so you and Dean would be born.”

Sam swallowed at the enormity of that.

“We could never have predicted the outcome though.” Gabriel sighed deeply. “By that, I mean, we could never have predicted how goddamned difficult you two were going to be.”

Sam chuckled. “I’d apologize, but—“

“No, that’s what I mean. That’s the answer to your question.” Gabriel’s hand touched Sam’s, fingers brushing. “You and Lucifer have a lot in common, whether you want to admit it or not. The thing that sets you apart is what you do with what you are. You both love too much, but Lucifer used it to fuel his anger, and you use it to do good.”

Gabriel paused again. Sam pressed his face into his shoulder and waited. He’d never heard Gabriel sound so somber, and it was slightly disconcerting, but he needed to hear this.

“You rebelled against every curveball Heaven through at you. I know I once told you that I wanted you to go along with their plan, but I mean, come on, I was rebelling against Heaven before it became a trend.” Sam snorted. “You were everything good about the brother I loved, with none of his crap, and you didn’t take Heaven’s shit. How could I ever resist you? It was never a coincidence that I kept finding you. I was drawn to you. Both you and Dean, really. But mostly you. Despite your darkness, you were kind, selfless, brave. You still had hope. As much as I wanted to, I could never hate you.”

Sam hummed quietly, forehead pressed to Gabriel’s shoulder blade, arms tight around his middle.

“Now,” Gabriel continued, tone lighter, “I’ve realized that you’re also a bit of an asshole.” Sam chuckled into the fabric of Gabriel’s shirt. “Which kind of makes me like you even more.”

There was a silence where Sam just absorbed what Gabriel had said, pressed against his back, warmth bleeding into one another.

“I thought you had a lot of questions,” Gabriel teased. “What happened to being pushy?”

Suddenly, all of Sam’s other questions seemed irrelevant. So he just said the first one that came to mind. “Did you ever figure out what that glowing light at the bottom of the ocean is?”

Gabriel cleared his throat. “You’re probably not going to like that answer as much as you liked the other one.”

“Why not?”

“Because I thought about it…and I realized…that the only dimension we haven’t seen a gap of…is Earth.”

“Earth?” he asked. “And it’s glowing because—?”

“It’s on fire.”

“Oh,” he choked out, throat dry and limbs cold and numb.

“I’m sorry I was so hard on you guys before,” Gabriel said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“We should have done more, tried harder,” Sam mumbled.

“Maybe. But there’s no use dwelling on that now, is there?” He patted Sam’s knee comfortingly. “So. Any other questions?”

“Hmm.” Sam thought about it, drummed his fingers on Gabriel’s elbow. “Are you okay?”

Judging by the way Gabriel went quiet and leaned his head back on Sam’s shoulder, Sam knew he had heard the meaning behind his words.

“I…” Gabriel closed his mouth and thought about it some more before trying again. “I still don’t…feel like myself. But I definitely feel less lonely, which I think is a definite improvement.”

“I’ll make sure you keep improving,” Sam smiled and Gabriel turned his head to give Sam a look, smirking as if about to tease him for being such a sap, but instead he just leaned in and kissed him.

 


	2. Epilogue

The world had died almost a year ago. Everyone on that world had also died almost a year ago. Sam had found himself stranded in a strange world along with his brother and best friend almost a year ago. Most importantly, he had been reunited with Gabriel almost a year ago. Sam had been diligently keeping track of their time spent in Limbo, no matter how many times Gabriel warned him against doing that.

Almost a year later and Sam has Gabriel pressed up against a tree, knee between his legs and lips hot on his neck. They’re supposed to be scouting, looking for wayward monsters or that entrance to Heaven they haven’t given up on yet. They’re supposed to be, but their skin is soft and their bodies warm and they’re drawn together like magnets. It’s not like Dean didn’t know that this would happen when they split up.

It’s an almost full moon tonight, the light illuminating everything and giving Sam nowhere to hide as he whispers, “I think I’m okay with never getting out of here.” His thigh grinds against Gabriel’s crotch, nails scratching slightly at the skin under his shirt. He wants to touch everything, give Gabriel as much as he can, coax the most beautiful sounds out of him to fill the ever-present silence. “If I get to have this for the rest of eternity.”

“Such a romancer,” Gabriel joked, but pulled Sam closer, catching his mouth and kissing him with heat.

Sam stumbled a bit with Gabriel’s strength and braced a hand against the tree they were pressed up against. His fingers ran across the rough bark and he tried very hard—just like all the other times they’ve found themselves doing this—to forget that the tree they were making out against had once been a human soul.

“I’ve been thinking,” Sam muttered, breaking the kiss and pulling away.

Gabriel gave an irritated tug at Sam’s hair where his hands were buried. “And  _now_ is the best time to tell me about it?  _Shit,_ ” he added in a gasp as Sam hauled him up by his thighs, making Gabriel wrap his legs around his waist.

“Yes,” Sam grinned and kissed him again, grinding into Gabriel and making him moan. This had been on Sam’s mind for a long time now, ever since Gabriel had told him the truth about what happened to the people in Limbo, but he had never been sure of it. He wanted to bring it up now, confirm his theory. “You know Dante by heart, right?”

“Y- _Yes,_ ” Gabriel shuddered as Sam rolled their hips together.

Sam kissed down Gabriel’s neck and whispered against his skin, “Recite to me the part where Virgil tells him how they’re going to get to Paradise.”

Gabriel stills in Sam’s arms, pulls away to frown at him questioningly. “Sam?”

“Please?” Sam’s lips and tongue return to Gabriel’s neck, hot and insistent.

“ _Fuck_ …how am I supposed to do that with you doing  _that_?” Gabriel growled, but Sam didn’t let up, so Gabriel leaned his head back to give him more room while he tried to find the right verse in his memory.

“’Therefore, for your own good,’” Gabriel began, hands on Sam’s shoulders to keep himself steady. “’I think it well you follow me’— _Sam, fuck—‘_ and I will be your g-guide and lead you forth through an eternal p-place.’” Sam sunk his teeth and sucked hard, making Gabriel gasp loudly, ending in a moan. “Uhhh…I can’t….remember…” Gabriel took a deep breath, tried to focus, and found his place. “’There you shall see the ancient sp-spirits’— _hnnn—_ ‘tried in endless pain, and hear their lamentation as each bemoans the second death of souls.’”

“Hell,” Sam elaborated, pulling away from Gabriel’s neck to kiss the corner of his mouth. There was a bright red mark on Gabriel’s throat that would disappear soon, and Sam would forever resent Limbo for always doing that. “Next?”

“’Next you shall see upon a burning mountain souls in fire and yet content in fire, knowing that whensoever it may be they will mount into the blessed choir.’”

“Purgatory and Heaven.” Sam pecked Gabriel’s lips. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“Yes and I don’t like it.” Sam frowned. “So kiss me and stop talking bull.” Gabriel kissed Sam, trying to salvage what they had had going on, but Sam pulled away.

“I’m serious, Gabe,” Sam said, eyes sad like a kicked puppy.

“No, you’re an idiot.” Gabriel unhooked his legs from Sam’s hips, making Sam drop him, and shoved him away, suddenly angry. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“But it makes sense, doesn't it?” Sam looked eager and excited, undeterred by Gabriel’s rebuffs. “If Limbo is how it’s described in Dante, then the path to Heaven should too. There’s no entrance to Heaven from here, and that’s why souls from Heaven never get through.”

“Sam—“

“If we want to get to Heaven, we have to take the same path Dante did.”

“ _No,_ ” Gabriel intoned, so serious and authoritative that Sam’s mouth snapped shut. “You’re talking about waltzing through Hell and Purgatory, searching for something we don’t even know where to  _begin_ looking for it. And it’s not going to be like Virgil taking Dante by the hand and just taking a scenic stroll through Hell. It’s going to be every single demon and monster, every nasty thing that you fought on Earth and that we've fought here, only multiplied times a million and with the advantage of being on their own plane. And they’re all going to be coming after  _us_ like we go after  _them_ because  _we_ are going to be the ones that don’t belong. Are you successfully understanding  _why_ you are an idiot or do you need further explanation?”

Sam just stared at Gabriel, completely unfazed.

“Further explanation would be: you just killed a perfectly decent boner,” Gabriel added accusingly.

Sam rolled his eyes. “You've known all this time that that is the only way out of here.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel snapped, rolling his eyes too. “I know everything. I was just hoping you’d all be either too stupid to figure it out or smart enough to realize what a stupid idea it is and never bring it up.”

“Too bad I fell somewhere in the middle.”

“You always seem to do exactly the  _opposite_ of what I want you to do.”

Sam cocked an eyebrow and smirked suggestively. “Always?”

Gabriel glared at him, but there was no heat to it and Sam smiled, stepping closer again. He backed Gabriel up against the tree, looming over him and looking down at him with a soft look.

“I wasn't lying earlier when I said I wouldn't mind spending the rest of eternity here.” He pressed a tender kiss to Gabriel’s forehead. “But I think that if there’s a chance for something better, we should at least try.”

Gabriel averted his eyes.

“What have we got to lose?” Sam continued. “If we die in the attempt, we end up here and start all over. It’s not like we have a time limit or something. It’ll be like an adventure. Give us something to do.”

“What? Fucking against trees isn’t good enough for you?”

Sam chuckled. “Something to do  _between_  fucking against trees.”

Gabriel wrapped his arms around the back of Sam’s neck. “This is probably a really bad idea.”

“We’d have to talk to Cas and Dean first,” Sam said, smiling triumphantly. “We can’t go without them.”

“Obviously.”

Foreheads pressed together, Sam closed his eyes, arms around Gabriel’s waist, sharing air and he said softly, “I love you,” and it’s the first time he’s said it.

Later, when he and Gabriel are tangled together, half their clothes strewn about, sated and trading soft kisses, Sam thinks about escaping. Finding Heaven and living there forever, the four of them together, Gabriel by his side and as bright and beautiful as he’s always been, no more darkness in his eyes.

If not, eventually they’re going to grow roots and branches and become a part of the forest here. He remembers the intertwined trees he had been so fascinated by and thinks he’d like something like that, his and Gabriel’s souls so bonded that they stay that way for all eternity, Cas and Dean’s trees not too far away from theirs.

Either way, Sam thinks he’d be happy. A warmth blooms in his stomach, like something waking up after being dormant for far too long. He feels hope for the first time in a long time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hate writing fics with no sex scene. This fic was SUPPOSED to have a sex scene but I decided to cut it. Since that is completely UNACCEPTABLE for me, expect a smutty timestamp within the next week or so.


End file.
